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Quotes

Early July 2003

“It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?” He added that he did not believe the war was about the alleged threat posed by Saddam Hussein, instead suggesting that the real motive behind the war was to “redraw the map of the Middle East.”
[Washington Post, 7/6/2003]

Associated Events

July 6, 2003

“The next day [January 29, 2003—the day after President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address], I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn’t know that in December, a month before the president’s address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.”
[New York Times, 7/6/2003]

Joseph C. Wilson was a participant or observer in the following events:

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who has already outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), now outs the CIA front firm that was her cover. In a column reporting that Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph Wilson made campaign donations of $1,000 each to Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 1999, Novak notes that Plame Wilson, under her married name of Valerie E. Wilson, “identified herself as an ‘analyst’ with ‘Brewster Jennings & Associates.’ No such firm is listed anywhere, but the late Brewster Jennings was president of Socony-Vacuum oil company a half-century ago. Any CIA employee working under ‘non-official cover’ always is listed with a real firm, but never an imaginary one. Sort of adds to the little mystery.” Novak fails to mention that Joseph Wilson also donated $1,000 to the campaign of George W. Bush. He also fails to note that he has indirectly admitted that he knew Plame Wilson was an undercover CIA agent. [Town Hall (.com), 10/4/2003; Washington Post, 10/4/2003] In 2005, Joseph Wilson will tell a reporter that Novak’s outing of Brewster Jennings indicates a “pattern of disclosure,” presumably indicating that Novak’s revealing of state secrets may rise to the level of criminal behavior. [Raw Story, 7/13/2005]

Three days after sending e-mails to White House employees specifying how they should cooperate in the FBI’s investigation of the Plame Wilson leak (see September 29-30, 2003) and September 30, 2003), White House counsel Alberto Gonzales sets deadlines for those employees to turn over information pursuant to that investigation. Gonzales sends an e-mail saying in part: “On September 30, 2003, you received two memoranda from me directing you to preserve and maintain certain documents. In a letter received yesterday evening, the Department of Justice has requested that we provide those documents to prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to this investigation. To ensure compliance with the time deadlines imposed by the Department of Justice, you are directed to provide to the Counsel’s Office, by no later than 5 p.m. on October 7, 2003, copies of the following documents, created during the time period February 1, 2002, through September 30, 2003, inclusive: “1. All documents that relate in any way to former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife’s purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and “2. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife’s purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and “3. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any or all of the following: reporters Knut Royce, Timothy M. Phelps, or Robert D. Novak, or any individual(s) acting directly or indirectly on behalf of them. “For purposes of this memorandum, the term ‘documents’ includes ‘without limitation all electronic records, telephone records of any kind (including but not limited to any documents that memorialize
telephone calls having been made), correspondence, computer records, storage devices, notes, memoranda, and diary and calendar entries’ in the possession of the Executive Office of the President, its staff, or its employees, wherever located, including any documents that may have been archived in Records Management. However, at this time, you do not need to provide to Counsel’s Office copies of the following, provided that they have not been marked upon in any way and are not accompanied by any notes or other commentary: (a) press clips or articles, whether in hard copy or e-mail or electronic form, or (b) either of the two memoranda I sent on September 30, 2003, regarding document preservation.” Gonzales attaches a compliance certification that must be completed and returned by 5 p.m. October 7, 2003. The compliance certification includes the following paragraph: “I further understand that this certification is for purposes of a federal criminal investigation and that intentional false statements may result in criminal penalties or other sanctions.” [Alberto R. Gonzales, 10/3/2003] In 2006, the media will learn that Gonzales withheld e-mails from the FBI that may have proven criminal complicity on the parts of senior White House officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney (see February 15, 2006).

On CNBC’s Capital Report, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell says it should be “easily ascertained” who the sources were for the Plame Wilson identity leak. Asked, “Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?” Mitchell responds, “It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger” (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Many interpret Mitchell’s comment to mean that she and many other reporters knew about Plame Wilson’s CIA status. Mitchell will later recant her statement, saying she misunderstood the question and “screwed it up.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 1/26/2006 ; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/26/2006 ] Mitchell will later explain her misstatement on a broadcast of the Don Imus radio and television show, saying: “This is one of those things. We’ve got a whole new world of journalism out there where there are people writing blogs who are going to grab this one thing and not everything else I have written and said about this and go to town with it. It supports their political point of view, and… bingo.” [Jane Hamsher, 3/13/2007]

President Bush says offhandedly of the Plame Wilson leak (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and Before July 14, 2003) that Washington “is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official.… You tell me: How many sources have you had that’s leaked information, that you’ve exposed or had been exposed? Probably none.” Many find Bush’s insouciance astonishing, considering the lengths his administration has gone to in the past to punish leakers. In response, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) calls for a special counsel to investigate the leak. Schumer also asks for an investigation of the three-day delay between the original announcement of the investigation and the instructions to the White House staff to preserve all relevant records (see September 29-30, 2003), and the possible conflict of interest concerning Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had once employed White House political strategist Karl Rove, named as a likely source of the leak (see September 30, 2003). [Vanity Fair, 1/2004; Rich, 2006, pp. 102] Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, will later write that he was “particularly offended” when Bush told reporters he wanted to know the truth, but then placed the responsibility upon journalists themselves to find the source of the leak. Wilson will reflect, “His lack of genuine concern stunned and disappointed me.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 397]

Frank Lautenberg, one of the Senate Democrats critical of the White House’s response to the leak investigation. [Source: Washington Post]Congressional Democrats question whether President Bush and White House officials are trying to influence the Plame Wilson leak investigation through their comments. Recently, Bush told reporters that he doubted the person or persons who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press would ever be identified (see October 7, 2003). While administration officials say Bush was just acknowledging the difficulties such an investigation presents, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) says his comments threaten to undermine the investigation by lowering expectations. “If the president says, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to find this person,’ what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?” Lautenberg asks. “Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation? He should be as indignant as everybody else is over this breach.” Bush, says Lautenberg, “certainly seems far less certain about finding the leaker than he is about finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.” Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson agrees. “This goes far beyond someone identifying my wife,” he says. “This was a breach of public trust, and I would think it would behoove the president to ensure that the appropriate assets are devoted to identifying the leaker.” In contrast, White House press secretary Scott McClellan says that criticism of the investigation “appear[s] to be more about politics than about getting to the bottom of the investigation.” Democrats are also critical of the White House’s vocal opposition to the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation. And they question McClellan’s recent attempts to exonerate three administration officials—Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams—from any responsibility for the leak (see October 4, 2003 and October 5, 2003). In a letter to Bush, four Democratic senators—Tom Daschle (D-SD), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and Charles Schumer (D-NY)—write that McClellan’s assurances are part of an overall pattern of missteps and errors surrounding the White House’s response to the leak investigation. McClellan lacks the legal expertise to question possible suspects, they note. “The White House has now put the Justice Department in the position of having to determine not only what happened, but also whether to contradict the publicly stated position of the White House,” the senators write. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo says that anything White House officials say has “nothing to do with this investigation. The investigation will follow the facts.” [New York Times Magazine, 10/10/2003]

White House press secretary Scott McClellan is interviewed by several FBI agents as part of the FBI’s investigation into the Plame Wilson leak. The FBI team is led by John Eckenrode, the senior agent who has spearheaded the bureau’s investigation. McClellan is accompanied by a White House lawyer (see October 10, 2003). He has already turned over a sheaf of documents from his work files, including an e-mail from a friend of his personal assistant, Carmen Ingwell. The friend claimed that she had attended a class or lecture at a California university several years before, at which, she said, Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, told his listeners that his wife was a CIA agent. McClellan will write, “I had no idea whether the story was true or not.” The FBI questions revolve mostly around “how the White House, including the White House’s communication team, operated and interacted with the media.” After the interview, McClellan remarks to the White House lawyer, Ted Ullyot, “I was surprised they didn’t ask any substantive questions about what I might know, such as my conversations with [Karl] Rove and [Lewis] Libby.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 222] McClellan will subsequently be interviewed a second time by the FBI (see Late October or Early November, 2003).

An internal CIA memo detailing the January 2002 meeting in which former ambassador Joseph Wilson was chosen to go to Niger to find out the truth behind the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations (see February 13, 2002) is published by the Wall Street Journal. The memo is due to be turned over to the Department of Justice along with thousands of other documents as part of its investigation into the outing of Wilson’s wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see September 26, 2003). The document shows that while Plame Wilson was involved in the decision to send her husband to Niger, she was not responsible for making the final decision, a conclusion already verified by CIA officials (see July 22, 2003). [Wall Street Journal, 10/17/2003]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson sits down with Jeff Gannon of Talon News to discuss the outing of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), his trip to Niger that helped debunk the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), and his concerns over the Iraq war. Wilson is unaware that Gannon is in reality James Guckert, a gay prostitute who moonlights as a fake journalist for the right-wing Talon News (see January 26, 2005 and January 28, 2005). Little of what Gannon/Guckert elicits is new information. Access to Classified Information? - However, early in the interview, Gannon/Guckert refers to a classified memo when he says, “An internal government memo prepared by US intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports.” The FBI will investigate Gannon/Guckert’s knowledge of the memo, but he will deny ever having seen it. It is not clear from whom he learned of the memo [Talon News, 10/28/2003; Wilson, 2007, pp. 216] , though he will insist that he received the information from “confidential sources.” [Antiwar (.com), 2/18/2005]America Did Not Debate Redrawing the Middle East as a Rationale for War - Wilson notes that he considered “the invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq for the purpose of disarming Saddam [Hussein] struck me as the highest risk, lowest reward option.… [W]e ought to understand that sending our men and women to kill and to die for our country is the most solemn decision a government has to make and we damn well ought to have that debate before we get them into harm’s way instead of after.” He explains why the idea that his wife selected him for the Niger mission is incorrect. When Gannon/Guckert attempts to pin him down by citing the initial meeting in which Plame Wilson suggested Wilson for the mission (see February 13, 2002), Wilson notes, “[T]hat fact that my wife knows that I know a lot about the uranium business and that I know a lot about Niger and that she happens to be involved in weapons of mass destruction, it should come as no surprise to anyone that we know of each others activities.” Wilson says that the aims of the administration’s neoconservatives—to redraw “the political map of the Middle East,” is something that has not been debated by the nation. The US did not debate the war with Iraq “on the grounds of redrawing the map of the Middle East,” he notes. Wilson Did Not Violate CIA Secrecy in Revealing Niger Mission - Gannon/Guckert asks if Wilson violated CIA secrecy in going public with the results of his Niger mission, as some on the right have asserted. Wilson reminds Gannon that his was not a clandestine trip, “not a CIA mission,” but an aboveboard fact-finding journey. Those circumstances were well understood by the CIA before he left for Niger. Implications of French Complicity in Niger Allegations Debunked - Gannon/Guckert tries to insinuate that the French may have had something to do with keeping the alleged uranium sales secret, and Wilson quickly shoots that line of inquiry down, saying, “The fact that you don’t like the French or that the French seem to have favored a different approach on this is far different from the French violating UN Security Council resolutions of which they are signatories, and clandestinely transferring 500 tons of uranium to a rogue country like Iraq is a real reach.” He then describes just how impossible it would have been for the French to have facilitated such a secret uranium transfer even had it wished. Refuses to Accuse Rove Directly - Wilson refuses to flatly name White House political strategist Karl Rove as the person behind the leaks of his wife’s clandestine identity, though he notes that Rove indeed labeled his wife “fair game” to the press (see July 21, 2003) and that Rove was in a perfect position to have orchestrated the leak. When Gannon/Guckert tells Wilson that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first published Plame Wilson’s name and occupation, denies that the White House gave him the information on her identity, Wilson retorts, “Novak has changed his story so much that it’s hard for me to understand what he is talking about” (see September 29, 2003). When a Leak Is Not a Leak - Gannon/Guckert brings up the allegation from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that Plame Wilson was revealed as an undercover agent by Russian spy Aldrich Ames in 1994. Because Ames may have revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to the Russians, Gannon/Guckert asks, isn’t it possible that she was no longer an undercover agent? Wilson refuses to validate the Ames speculation, and finally says that the CIA would not be treating this so seriously if it were as frivolous an issue as Gannon/Guckert suggests. “[R]emember this is not a crime that has been committed against my wife or against me,” he says. “If there was a crime, it was committed against our country. The CIA has referred the matter to the Justice Department for further investigation, I don’t believe that’s a frivolous referral.” [Talon News, 10/28/2003]

Former senior Watergate counsel Samuel Dash (see March 25, 1973) writes that if Bush administration officials leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson to the press (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and Before July 14, 2003), “they may have committed an act of domestic terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.” Dash notes that the Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state” that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” In Dash’s estimation, the Plame Wilson leak meets this criteria. It put Plame Wilson’s life at risk along with “her contacts abroad whom terrorists groups can now trace.” It is a clear violation of US criminal law. And its intent was to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”—to intimidate Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, into silence, along with “all critics of the administration” who now know “they too can be destroyed if they persist.” Dash notes that the Patriot Act “distorts the criminal law, and its dragnet provisions threaten the liberty of too many innocent people,” so such an accusation—the Bush administration committed an act of domestic terrorism—may be an overstatement of the realities of the case. However, Dash continues, interpreting the law is irrelevant. The administration’s actions under the existing law are the issue. Dash writes that the Justice Department faces a dilemma: “Can they treat this investigation differently from any other terrorist investigation? Under the Patriot Act, they have acquired expanded powers to wiretap and search. Will they place sweeping and roving wiretaps on White House aides? Will they engage in sneak, secret searches of their offices, computers, and homes? Will they arrest and detain incommunicado, without access to counsel, some White House aides as material witnesses?” The Justice Department will not do so, Dash writes, nor should they: “I hope they would not employ such police-state tactics. I had hoped they would not use them against ordinary American citizens, but the attorney general has done so, insisting he needs to use these powers to protect our safety. Then why are they not equally needed in a domestic terrorism investigation of White House aides?” Dash concludes that whether or not the leak “constitutes an act of domestic terrorism under the Patriot Act, it was certainly an outrageous betrayal of trust and an arrogant display of power by officials charged with protecting our national security and, on behalf of the president, assuring that the laws are faithfully executed.” [Newsday, 10/28/2003; Wilson, 2004, pp. 399-401]

Tim Russert, NBC’s bureau chief and host of Meet the Press, is interviewed by FBI agent John Eckenrode as part of the Plame Wilson leak investigation. One of the targets of the investigation, White House official Lewis Libby, has indicated that he learned about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). According to the report later compiled by Eckenrode, Russert recalls “one, and possibly two telephone conversations” between himself and Libby between July 6 and July 12, 2003. Eckenrode will write: “Russert does not recall stating to Libby, in this conversation, anything about the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson. Although he could not completely rule out the possibility that he had such an exchange, Russert was at a loss to remember it, and moreover, he believes that this would be the type of conversation that he would or should remember. Russert acknowledged that he speaks to many people on a daily basis and it is difficult to reconstruct some specific conversations, particularly one which occurred several months ago.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/14/2006 ]

Senior CIA official Robert Grenier, who, as the agency’s mission manager, inquired about the Joseph Wilson mission to Niger on behalf of the vice president’s office (see 4:30 p.m. June 10, 2003), and told Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA official (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), is interviewed by the FBI as part of the Plame Wilson investigation. Grenier tells FBI investigators of his June 11, 2003 conversation with Libby, regarding Wilson’s Niger trip and the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). Grenier says that he is not sure whether Plame Wilson’s name came up during the conversation, a story he will tell again to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak in January 2004, but will change when he testifies for the prosecution in the Libby perjury trial (see January 24, 2007). [Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007; Mother Jones, 1/25/2007; New York Times, 3/2007]

Diane Sawyer with President Bush. [Source: USA Today]President Bush gives a rare one-on-one interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Among other topics addressed, he reaffirms his belief that terrorists operated in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion (citing Ansar al-Islam, “a al-Qaeda affiliate, I would call them al-Qaeda, was active in Iraq before the war, hence—a terrorist tie with Iraq…”) and that his insistence that Iraq had an active and threatening WMD program was based on “good solid intelligence[, t]he same intelligence that my predecessor [Bill Clinton] operated on.” [ABC News, 12/17/2003] In 2004, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will respond, “His predecessor, however, never claimed that Saddam [Hussein] had imminent… nuclear capacity, nor did his predecessor say that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda.” [Dean, 2004, pp. 153]Iraq Had WMD Program, Bush Insists - Bush insists that weapons inspector David Kay proved Iraq did have a burgeoning and active WMD program (see October 2, 2003), and implies that it is just a matter of time before the actual weapons are found. Sawyer says, “But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still,” to which Bush replies, “So what’s the difference?” Sawyer appears taken aback by the answer, and Bush continues that since it was possible Hussein would acquire WMDs, it was necessary to “get rid of him” to make “the world a safer, freer place.” Sawyer presses the point home: “What would it take to convince you he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush responds: “Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.” Sawyer asks, “And if he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush replies tartly: “Diane, you can keep asking the question. I’m telling you, I made the right decision for America. Because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait (see August 2, 1990). But the fact that he is not there is, means America’s a more secure country.” [ABC News, 12/17/2003] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write, “Bush’s response was telling, much more so than I stopped to contemplate at the time.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 200]Why Read the News? - Sawyer asks Bush about his reported penchant for not reading the news for himself. Bush confirms that he gets his news from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who, Sawyer says, “give you a flavor of what’s in the news.” Bush agrees that this is the case, and says: “Yeah. I get my news from people who don’t editorialize. They give me the actual news. And it makes it easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts.” Sawyer asks, “Is it just harder to read constant criticism or to read?” to which Bush replies: “Why even put up with it when you can get the facts elsewhere? I’m a lucky man. I’ve got, it’s not just Condi and Andy. It’s all kinds of people in my administration who are charged with different responsibilities. And they come in and say, ‘this is what’s happening, this isn’t what’s happening.’” Laura Bush, who joins her husband halfway through the interview, says she reads the newspapers, including the opinion columns, but says: “I agree with him that we can actually get what is really happening from the people who really know what’s happening. And that isn’t always what you get in the newspapers.… There are certain columnists I won’t read. I mean, what, you know, why would I?” [ABC News, 12/17/2003]Wilson: Bush 'Systematically Deceived' US, 'Betrayed' Military - Months later, former ambassador Joseph Wilson will write: “It was clear, from this one statement, […] that the administration, from the president on down, had systematically deceived the American people, Congress, and the world. Most of all, the president had betrayed the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who so bravely march out when ordered into war to defend our country against immiment threats, or even from grave and gathering dangers. Iraq had posed neither. The difference, Mr. President, I thought, is that war was not the only option, or even the best one. We had gone to war over capacity, not stockpiles, not mushroom clouds (see September 4, 2002), not intent, or, as John Bolton had earlier said more directly, because scientists were on Saddam’s payroll. Our troops had died—and were continuing to die—in vain. I came away from this sad revelation resolved that, unlike the other bitterly divisive war debate of my lifetime, over the war in Vietnam, we should admit this terrible fact sooner, rather than later, and thereby revise our national policies accordingly.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 414-415]

Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson, photographed in December 2003 for a Vanity Fair profile. [Source: Jonas Karlsson / Vanity Fair]Vanity Fair publishes an interview with Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) and his wife, recently outed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). It is the first interview with Plame Wilson after her exposure. The article features a photo of the Wilsons, which constitutes the first public photo of Plame Wilson after her exposure. She conceals her features behind large sunglasses and a scarf. [Vanity Fair, 1/2004] Many Bush administration supporters and others will criticize the Wilsons for allowing themselves to be interviewed and photographed. Wilson later calls his wife’s decision to allow herself to be photographed “spur of the moment,” and will note: “She had already been described as the beautiful blonde that she is, and her cover had long since been blown, so the only concern remaining was whether strangers would be able to use a photo to recognize her in public. With proper precautions taken, I saw no reason to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of being photographed together as the happily married couple that we are.” Later assertions that Plame Wilson had “blown her own cover” by allowing herself to be photographed are “laughable,” Wilson will write. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 409-410]

CIA official Craig Schmall, who serves as Vice President Dick Cheney’s agency briefer and has served as the briefer for Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003 and July 14, 2003), is interviewed by the FBI in the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation. Schmall says nothing about either Valerie Plame Wilson or her husband, Joseph Wilson, though he discussed both of them with Libby and Cheney. It is not known if the FBI is aware of the earlier conversations between Schmall, Libby, and Cheney. [Central Intelligence Agency, 1/9/2004 ; Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007]

In response to a question at a news conference, Secretary of State Colin Powell says, “I have not seen a smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection [between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda], but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.” [Associated Press, 1/8/2004; Independent, 1/11/2004] Former ambassador Joseph Wilson will later write, “The second justification for war—ties to ‘terrorism with a global reach,’ to use the president’s own words—had now been discredited by one of the most senior officials in his own administration.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 413]

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, testifies under oath before the grand jury investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity (see December 30, 2003 and January 2004). According to the indictment that will later be issued against Libby (see October 28, 2005), he commits perjury during his testimony. [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 ; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Libby is questioned by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is aided by deputy special counsels Ron Roos, Peter Zeidenberg, and Kathleen Kedian. At the beginning of the questioning, Fitzgerald ensures that Libby understands the circumstances that constitute perjury. Denies Being Source for Columnist - Fitzgerald asks Libby about his involvement as a source for columnist Robert Novak, who revealed Plame Wilson’s secret CIA status in a column (see July 14, 2003). Libby denies being a source for Novak. Admits Learning about Plame Wilson's CIA Status from Cheney - He admits that Cheney told him that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer: while discussing Wilson’s trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), Libby says of Cheney: “And in the course of describing this he also said to me in sort of an off-hand manner, as a curiosity, that his wife worked at the CIA, the person who—whoever this person was. There were no names at that stage so I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson’s name at that point, or the wife’s name.” Libby also admits that he knew Plame Wilson worked at the “functional office” of the CIA that handled the Iraq WMD issue. Libby 'Forgot' He Already Knew about Plame Wilson - Later in the interview, Fitzgerald asks again if it is “fair to say that [Cheney] had told you back in June, June 12 or before… that his wife worked in the functional office of counterproliferation of the CIA (see (June 12, 2003)). Correct?” Libby answers, “Yes, sir.” Fitzgerald then asks: “So when you say, that after we learned that his wife worked at the agency, that became a question. Isn’t it fair to say that you already knew it from June 12 or earlier?” Libby then answers: “I believe by, by this week I no longer remembered that. I had forgotten it. And I believe that because when it was told to me on July 10, a few days after this article, it seemed to me as if I was learning it for the first time. When I heard it, I did not think I knew it when I heard.” Libby is referring to his claim that he originally learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003), a claim that Russert will strongly deny (see February 7-8, 2007). [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 ]Claims Not to Have Discussed Plame Wilson until after Novak's Column Published - Fitzgerald asks Libby if he recalls the question of whether the possibility that Plame Wilson sent her “husband on a junket” (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After), and whether he discussed it with Cheney. Libby replies: “I don’t recall the conversation until after the Novak piece. I don’t recall it during the week of July 6. I recall it after the Novak… after the Novak article appeared.” Fitzgerald, obviously unconvinced by Libby’s claim, asks, “And are you telling us under oath that from July 6 to July 14 you never discussed with Vice President Cheney whether Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA?” Libby responds: “No, no, I’m not saying that. On July 10 or 11 I learned, I thought anew, that the wife—that the reporters were telling us that the wife worked at the CIA. And I may have had a conversation with the vice president either late on the 11th or on the 12th in which I relayed that reporters were saying that.” Libby is lying by claiming he never discussed Plame Wilson with Cheney or other White House officials between July 6 and July 14 (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, July 7-8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 12:00 p.m. July 7, 2003, and July 10 or 11, 2003). [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 ; National Journal, 1/12/2007]Denies Learning of State Department Memo until Late September 2003 - Libby also denies learning of the State Department’s interest in the Wilson trip and in Wilson’s wife until after the investigation into Plame Wilson’s identity became public on September 28, 2003, “a couple days after that,” he says. “I don’t have any recollection of an INR [Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the State Department’s intelligence bureau] document prior to that date.” Libby is lying; he learned about the State Department’s inquiry into the Wilson trip, and Plame Wilson’s CIA status, much earlier (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). He also denies asking the State Department’s Marc Grossman for information on Wilson’s Niger trip, which is most likely another lie (see May 29, 2003). And he claims not to remember if he learned from Grossman that Plame Wilson was a CIA official. Denies Talking to CIA Official - Libby also claims not to remember discussing Plame Wilson with Robert Grenier, the CIA’s Iraq mission manager. “I don’t think I discussed Wilson’s wife’s employment with, with Mr. Grenier,” he testifies. “I think if I discussed something it was what they knew about the request about Mr., about Mr. Wilson. I don’t recall the content of the discussion.” Asked “if there was an urgency to the conversation” with Grenier, Libby replies, “I recall that I was reaching Mr. Grenier—I was trying to reach Mr. McLaughlin [John McLaughlin, then the CIA’s deputy director, who spoke to Cheney the day before about Plame Wilson—see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003) and couldn’t, and spoke instead to Mr. Grenier. And so if I did that instead of just waiting for Mr. McLaughlin, it was probably something that was urgent in the sense that my boss, the vice president, wanted, wanted to find something out. Not, not necessarily in the real world, but he wanted an answer and usually we try and get him the answer when we can.” Libby did indeed meet with Grenier, and quizzed him about Plame Wilson (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). Denies Leaking Name to Post Reporter - Libby claims not to be sure if he was a source for a June 2003 article by Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus (see June 12, 2003), but says he is sure he did not divulge Plame Wilson’s identity to him. “I have no recollection of having discussed it with Mr. Pincus and I don’t think I did,” Libby testifies. He acknowledges that his own notes, entered into evidence by Fitzgerald, show that he discussed the Pincus article with Cheney before it was published. Libby also denies revealing Plame Wilson’s identity to two New York Times reporters, David Sanger and James Risen. Challenges Wilson's Characterization of Iraq-Niger Claims - Using language similar to that he and other members of Cheney’s staff have used in press conferences and to individual reporters, Libby says that Joseph Wilson’s questioning of the Iraq-Niger claims were ill-informed, and that Wilson was wrong to speculate that Cheney had deliberately ignored the evidence that those claims were false to insist that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program and therefore constituted a danger to the US (see March 24, 2002, August 2002, March 16, 2003, and July 6-10, 2003). Libby says of Wilson’s op-ed in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003), “It’s a, it’s a bad article.” He admits to being angry over the article, then changes it to being “concerned because it didn’t seem to me an accurate portrayal of the facts.… Upset’s a fair word, I guess.” He admits to discussing the Wilson op-ed with Cheney shortly after its publication, though he is unsure of the exact date of that discussion (see July 6-10, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Libby acknowledges that notations on a copy of the Wilson op-ed are in Cheney’s handwriting (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After). [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 ]

Cover of Wilson’s ‘The Politics of Truth.’ [Source: Barnes and Noble]Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who helped disprove the White House’s claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003) and in turn had his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, exposed as a CIA agent through a White House leak (see July 14, 2003, September 26, 2003, and September 30, 2003), publishes his book, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity: A Diplomat’s Memoir. He had signed with a relatively small publisher, Carroll & Graf, after making a gentleman’s agreement with C&G editor Philip Turner, and refused to allow his literary agent to bid his book out for a larger advance in order to honor the agreement with Turner. According to Wilson’s wife, he worked relentlessly for four months to complete the book, eager to tell not just the story of his trip to Niger and his wife’s outing, but to write about his wide and varied diplomatic career in Africa and the Middle East (see September 5, 1988 and After, September 20, 1990, and Late November, 1990). [Wilson, 2007, pp. 171-172] The book sells well and garners mostly positive reviews; for example, author and former White House counsel John Dean gives it a glowing review in the New York Times (see May 12, 2004). But right-wing supporters of the Bush administration quickly publish their own vilifications of Wilson and his book (see July 12, 2004). Plame Wilson will write in 2007: “Having lived through the first spate of attacks on Joe’s credibility and character in the wake of the leak, I thought I had acquired some armor. I was wrong. I knew the comments were politically motivated, but they were still painful to read, and once again we felt under siege.” Plame Wilson is particularly alarmed by the death threats made against her and her family by unidentified telephone callers, including one “seriously deranged person” who manages to talk to her four-year-old son for a moment. She asks the CIA for additional security measures to protect her children, a request that the agency will eventually deny. She will recall: “To say that the CIA response ‘disappointed’ me doesn’t begin to touch the betrayal that I felt. After [REDACTED] loyal service, I expected the agency to come through on its standing promise to protect its ‘family,’ something that had always been a point of CIA pride.… Clearly, I was on my own.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 178-180]

CIA official Craig Schmall, who serves as Vice President Dick Cheney’s agency briefer and has served as the briefer for Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003 and July 14, 2003), is interviewed again by the FBI in the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see January 8, 2004). As in his first interview, Schmall says nothing about either Valerie Plame Wilson or her husband, Joseph Wilson, though he discussed both of them with Libby and Cheney; it is unclear if the FBI is aware of Schmall’s discussions with the two White House officials. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, in his newly published book The Politics of Truth, reflects on what he perceives as the absolute lack of need for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He writes: “[J]ust what was required to ensure the [Hussein] regime’s eventual collapse was already happening before the middle of March 2003. We had infiltrated Saddam’s intelligence services; we had turned several of his senior military commanders. We were locked and loaded, but we did not need to fire. Not at all. A little patience would have achieved everything we wanted, without creating the whirlwind that we are now reaping in our bloody and chaotic occupation of the country.” While it has been trying on the nation’s patience to impose economic and military sanctions on Iraq for 12 years, Wilson notes, the Cold War lasted far longer and featured a much more dangerous opponent. How the US handled the Cold War provides “a useful blueprint on how to subvert an oppressive regime and achieve regime change without resorting to brute force,” he writes. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 422-423]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson gives an interview to the liberal news Web site Buzzflash about his newly published book, The Politics of Truth. In the interview and the book, Wilson notes that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have left many Iraqis with few choices advantageous to their American occupiers. As long as the US fails to provide reliable electricity, water, and security services for Iraqi citizens, Wilson writes, “they will see no option but to seek protection from within their traditional family and clan structures. We are fighting two wars in Iraq right now: the war against the insurgency and the war to restore public safety and services. If we cannot win the latter, then the ranks of the former will continue to swell daily with bitter citizens.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 429; Buzzflash (.com), 4/30/2004]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, discussing his two trips to Niger in 1999 (see Fall 1999) and 2002 (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) to investigate whether Iraq was attempting to obtain uranium from that nation, says that in 1999 he never discussed the subject of uranium purchases. Wilson, who met with former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, says: “At that meeting, uranium was not discussed. It would be a tragedy to think that we went to war over a conversation in which uranium was not discussed because the Niger official was sufficiently sophisticated to think that perhaps he might have wanted to discuss uranium at some later date.” He will later tell Senate Intelligence Committee staffers that Mayaki was leery of discussing any trade issues at all because Iraq was under United Nations sanctions. [FactCheck (.org), 7/26/2004]

Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed in his office by federal prosecutors as part of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003). Cheney is asked if he knows who, if anyone, in the White House might have leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. He is asked about conversations with his senior aides, including his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. He is also asked whether he knows of any concerted effort by White House officials to leak Plame Wilson’s identity. Cheney is not questioned under oath, and has not been asked to testify before the grand jury. He is represented by two lawyers, Terrence O’Donnell and Emmet Flood. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5/8/2004 ; New York Times, 6/5/2004]Cheney Evades, Refuses to Answer Questions - In October 2009, an FBI interview summary regarding Cheney’s testimony will be released (see October 1, 2009). According to the document, Cheney equivocates or refuses to answer 72 times during his interview, either saying he cannot be certain about the information requested, or that he does not know. Denies Informing Libby about Plame Wilson's CIA Status - One of the most fundamental questions Cheney is asked is about how Libby learned about Plame Wilson’s identity. Libby’s own notes indicate that he learned it from Cheney, and that he had shared his notes with Cheney in late 2003 (see Late September or Early October, 2003), in defiance of instructions from the FBI and the White House counsel’s office not to share information with colleagues (see September 29-30, 2003). But in his testimony, Cheney “cannot recall Scooter Libby telling him how he first heard of Valerie Wilson. It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson’s employment from the vice president… but the vice president has no specific recollection of such a conversation.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5/8/2004 ; Associated Press, 11/2/2009] Cheney testifies that contrary to the evidence, he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Libby, who informed him that a number of reporters had contacted Libby in July 2003 to say that Plame Wilson had been responsible for arranging her husband’s trip to Niger to investigate the Niger uranium claims. Cheney says that the next time he heard about Plame Wilson and her connection to her husband was when he read Robert Novak’s article outing her as a CIA officer (see July 14, 2003). Cheney is lying; he informed Libby of Plame Wilson’s identity (see (June 12, 2003)). Denies Knowledge of Wilson Trip to Niger - He also denies knowing that Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from that country (see (February 13, 2002) and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and says the CIA never briefed him about Wilson’s trip (see March 5, 2002). Future testimony will challenge Cheney’s claims, as witnesses will testify that Cheney, Libby, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, the Defense Department, the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and President Bush were all given copies of a CIA cable sent to Cheney’s office that debunked the Niger claims (see December 2001, Shortly after February 12, 2002, March 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, March 8, 2002, October 15, 2002, Mid-October 2002, October 18, 2002, January 2003, and March 8, 2003). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5/8/2004 ; Truthout (.org), 2/15/2006]Refuses to Answer about WMD NIE - Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, leading the interview, presses Cheney to discuss evidence that shows he pressured Bush to quickly declassify portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD (see October 1, 2002) for the purpose of making the case for invading Iraq. Libby provided selected NIE information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller while simultaneously leaking Plame Wilson’s identity to her (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) and other reporters. Cheney refuses to confirm that he discussed anything regarding the NIE with Bush, saying that he could not comment on any private or privileged conversations he may have had with the president. Libby has already testified to the declassification of the NIE, telling prosecutors that he talked to Miller following the “president’s approval relayed to me through the vice president.” Insists Plame Wilson's Identity Never Used to Discredit Husband - Cheney insists that no one in the White House ever talked about leaking Plame Wilson’s CIA status to the press in an attempt to discredit her husband. There was never any discussion, Cheney says, of “pushing back” on Wilson’s credibility by raising the issue of nepotism, the fact that his wife worked for the CIA, the same agency that dispatched him to Niger to run down the report of an agreement to supply uranium to Iraq. In his own testimony, Libby was far less emphatic, saying “[i]t’s possible” he may have discussed the idea with Cheney. Both men lie in their testimony (see March 9, 2003 and After, May 2003, June 3, 2003, June 9, 2003, June 11 or 12, 2003, (June 11, 2003), 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (June 12, 2003), June 19 or 20, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, July 7-8, 2003, 12:00 p.m. July 7, 2003, July 8, 2003, and 7:35 a.m. July 8, 2003). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5/8/2004 ; Associated Press, 11/2/2009] Cheney tells prosecutors that he and his office were merely interested in rebutting Wilson’s criticisms of the war effort, and wanted to dispel the notion among some reporters that he had selected Wilson for the Niger trip. In 2006, an attorney close to the case will say: “In his testimony the vice president said that his staff referred media calls about Wilson to the White House press office. He said that was the appropriate venue for responding to statements by Mr. Wilson that he believed were wrong.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5/8/2004 ; Truthout (.org), 2/15/2006] In June 2009, the Department of Justice will reveal that Cheney and Bush had discussed the leak in a “confidential conversation” and “an apparent communication between the vice president and the president.” [Truthout (.org), 7/7/2009]

Author and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean reviews former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s new book, The Politics of Truth (see April 2004). Dean, who has long been a fierce critic of the Bush administration, uses the review to examine aspects of the controversy surrounding the White House’s disproven claim that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003) and the outing of Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent through a White House leak (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, Before July 14, 2003, and July 14, 2003). Dean calls the book “riveting and all-engaging… provid[ing] context to yesterday’s headlines, and perhaps tomorrow’s, about the Iraq war and about our politics of personal destruction,” as well as detailed information about Wilson’s long diplomatic service in Africa and the Middle East, and what Dean calls “a behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.” 'Anti-Dumb-War' - Dean also admires Wilson’s opposition to the Iraq war, saying that “Wilson is not antiwar. Rather, he is ‘anti-dumb-war’” and noting that while Wilson is not himself particularly conservative (or liberal), he considers the neoconservatives who make up the driving force in President Bush’s war cabinet “right-wing nuts.” 'Vicious Hatchet Job' - Dean quickly moves into the White House-orchestrated attempt to besmirch Wilson’s credibility, calling it “the most vicious hatchet job inside the Beltway since my colleague in Richard Nixon’s White House, the dirty trickster Charles W. Colson, copped a plea for defaming Daniel Ellsberg and his lawyer (see June 1974).… It was an obvious effort to discredit Wilson’s [Niger] report, and, Wilson believes, a you-hurt-us-we-will-hurt-you warning to others.” While Wilson writes with passion and anger about the outing of his wife, he restrains himself from giving too many personal details about her, relying instead on material already revealed in press interviews and reports. Dean notes that Wilson believes his wife’s name was leaked to the press by any or all of the following White House officials: Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist; and Elliott Abrams, a national security adviser and former Iran-Contra figure (see October 7, 1991). Though Dean is correct in noting that Wilson comes to his conclusions “based largely on hearsay from the Washington rumor mill,” he will be proven accurate in two out of three of his assertions (see July 8, 2003,
11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Wilson continues to fight attacks from Bush supporters, but, Dean notes, if they actually read his book, “they should understand that they have picked a fight with the wrong fellow.” [New York Times, 5/12/2004]

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler is interviewed by federal prosecutors as part of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003). Kessler testifies about two conversations he had with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby; his testimony is not made public. Kessler does not violate any promises to confidential sources, and later says he testified at Libby’s urging. Prosecutors believe that Kessler may have been one of the reporters who was given Plame Wilson’s name by White House officials (see Before July 14, 2003), but Kessler does not name Libby as a source of Plame Wilson’s identity. [Washington Post, 6/25/2004; New York Times, 8/10/2004; Washington Post, 8/10/2004] According to reporter Timothy Phelps, Kessler testifies that Libby never mentioned either Plame Wilson or her husband, Joseph Wilson. [Columbia Journalism Review, 1/1/2006]

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler is interviewed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as part of Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak. Kessler has agreed to give a deposition concerning two of his telephone conversations with Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, on July 12 (see July 12, 2003) and July 18, 2003. Libby and other White House aides have signed waivers releasing Kessler and other journalists from any confidentiality agreements they may have concerning Plame Wilson (see January 2-5, 2004). Kessler tells Fitzgerald that Libby did not mention Plame Wilson or her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, during their conversations. He says that without the waiver he would have refused to testify; Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. says the agreement to allow Kessler to be deposed was “reached in a way so that we are not violating any confidential source agreements, and we will never do so willingly.” Kessler’s deposition takes place in the presence of Post lawyers, at a law office, and not before Fitzgerald’s grand jury. [Washington Post, 6/23/2004; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007]

President Bush is interviewed for over an hour as part of the ongoing investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). Bush, who is not sworn in, is interviewed by a team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. His lawyer, James Sharp (whom Bush has nicknamed “Shooter”), is also present during questioning (see June 5, 2004). White House press secretary Scott McClellan refuses to divulge any details of what Bush says to his interviewers, only telling reporters: “The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter. The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with those in charge of the investigation. He was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward.” Fitzgerald has already interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney (see May 8, 2004), and has called several current and former White House officials to testify before a grand jury. He has also subpoenaed a number of records, including White House phone logs. McClellan confirms that the interview with Bush and Sharp lasted about 70 minutes; asked if the White House had set a time limit on the interview, he says it would be “wrong to characterize it that way.” Even though Bush does not testify under oath, federal law requires him to be truthful in his statements, and he could be charged with making false statements if prosecutors found he lied or was evasive. [New York Times, 6/25/2004; McClellan, 2008, pp. 228]Directly Contradicting Cheney - The media will later learn that Bush says he personally directed Cheney to lead a White House effort to counter allegations made by Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, that the White House had manipulated intelligence to make the case for war with Iraq (see March 9, 2003 and After). Bush also admits that he directed Cheney to disclose classified information that would both defend his administration and discredit Wilson. His testimony directly contradicts Cheney’s. Bush says he did not know that Cheney had told his then-chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public in the usual, overt fashion. Denies Instructing Subordinates to Leak Plame Wilson Info - He also denies telling anyone to reveal Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and says he does not know who in his administration made her CIA status public knowledge. Libby has testified that neither Bush nor Cheney directed him or any other White House official to leak Plame Wilson’s identity. According to one senior government official, Bush told Cheney to “Get it out,” or “Let’s get this out,” regarding information that administration officials believed would rebut Wilson’s allegations and would discredit him. Another source with direct knowledge of the interview will later say that characterization is consistent with what Bush tells Fitzgerald. Libby told the grand jury that Cheney had told him to “get all the facts out” to defend the administration and besmirch Wilson. [National Journal, 7/3/2006]

Pat Roberts during a July 9, 2004 interview on PBS. [Source: PBS]The Senate Intelligence Committee releases the 511-page Senate Report on Iraqi WMD intelligence, formally titled the “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the US Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq.” [US Congress, 7/7/2004; CNN, 7/9/2004] All nine Republicans and eight Democrats signed off on the report without dissent, which, as reporter Murray Waas will write, is “a rarity for any such report in Washington, especially during an election year.” [National Journal, 10/27/2005]Report Redacted by White House - About 20 percent of the report was redacted by the White House before its release, over the objections of both Republicans and Democrats on the committee. Some of the redactions include caveats and warnings about the reliability of key CIA informants, one code-named “Red River” and another code-named “Curveball” (see Mid- and Late 2001). The source called “Red River” failed polygraph tests given to him by CIA officers to assess his reliability, but portions of the report detailing these and other caveats were redacted at the behest of Bush administration officials. [New York Times, 7/12/2004; New York Times, 7/18/2004]Widespread Failures of US Intelligence - The report identifies multiple, widespread failures by the US intelligence community in its gathering and analysis of intelligence about Iraq WMD, which led to gross misunderstandings and misrepresentations about Iraq’s WMD programs to the American public by government officials. Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), who has previously attempted to shift blame for the intelligence misrepresentations away from the Bush administration and onto the CIA (see July 11, 2003 and After), says that intelligence used to support the invasion of Iraq was based on assessments that were “unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence.” He continues: “Before the war, the US intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Today we know these assessments were wrong.” Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the 18-member panel that created the report, says “bad information” was used to bolster the case for war. “We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now,” he says (see October 10, 2002). “Leading up to September 11, our government didn’t connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed.” Numerous assertions in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE—see October 1, 2002) were “overstated” or “not supported by the raw intelligence reporting,” including: Claims that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program; Claims that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; Claims that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle that could be used to deliver chemical and/or biological weapons payloads onto distant targets; The so-called “layering effect,” where “assessments were based on previous judgments, without considering the uncertainties of those judgments” (Roberts calls it an “assumption train”); The failure to explain adequately the uncertainties in the October 2002 NIE to White House officials and Congressional lawmakers; Reliance on claims by “Curveball,” noting that the use of those claims “demonstrated serious lapses in handling such an important source”; Use of “overstated, misleading, or incorrect” information in helping then-Secretary of State Colin Powell present the administration’s case to the United Nations in February 2003 (see February 5, 2003); and The failure of the CIA to share significant intelligence with other agencies. [CNN, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004]“One fact is now clear,” Roberts says. “Before the war, the US intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Well, today we know these assessments were wrong.” [Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] Rockefeller says the intelligence community failed to “accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to policymakers.” The community’s “intelligence failures” will haunt America’s national security “for generations to come,” he says. “Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower,” he says. “We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before.” [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004]'Group Think' and 'Corporate Culture' - Roberts says the report finds that the “flawed” information used to send the nation to war was the result of “what we call a collective group think, which led analysts and collectors and managers to presume that Iraq had active and growing WMD programs.” He says this “group think caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs.” Roberts blames “group think” and a “broken corporate culture and poor management,” which “cannot be solved by simply adding funding and also personnel.” [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004]Lack of Human Intelligence in Iraq - Perhaps the most troubling finding, Roberts says, is the intelligence community’s near-total lack of human intelligence in Iraq. “Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the UN inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target,” he says. [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004]No Connection between Iraq, al-Qaeda - Rockefeller says that the administration’s claims of an alliance between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had no basis in fact: “[N]o evidence existed of Iraq’s complicity or assistance in al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks, including 9/11.” The report says that intelligence claims of connections between Iraq and some terrorist activities were accurate, though the contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq from the 1990s “did not add up to an established formal relationship.” [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004]Divided Opinion on Pressure from Bush Administration - Republicans and Democrats on the committee differ as to whether they believe the CIA and other intelligence agencies groomed or distorted their findings as a result of political pressure from the White House. “The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community’s mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure,” Roberts says. However, Rockefeller notes that the report fails to explain fully the pressures on the intelligence community “when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly. It was clear to all of us in this room who were watching that—and to many others—that they had made up their mind that they were going to go to war.” The analysts were subjected to a “cascade of ominous statements,” Rockefeller says, that may have pushed them to slant their analyses in the direction the White House indicated it wanted. The report finds that Vice President Dick Cheney and others who repeatedly visited intelligence agencies (see 2002-Early 2003) pressured intelligence analysts or officials to present particular findings or change their views. However, the report notes repeated instances of analysts exaggerating what they knew, and leaving out, glossing over, or omitting dissenting views. According to the report, the intelligence community released a misleading public version of the October 2002 NIE (see October 4, 2002) that eliminated caveats and dissenting opinions, thus misrepresenting “their judgments to the public which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments.” [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004] In an interview the evening after the report’s release, Rockefeller is asked if the report documents “a failure of a system or is this a failure of a bunch of individuals who just did their jobs poorly?” Rockefeller responds: “This is a failure of a system.… It is not fair to simply dump all of this on the Central Intelligence Agency. The Central Intelligence Agency does not make the decision, and [former Director] George Tenet does not make the decision to go to war. That decision is made at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.… So we went to war under false pretenses, and I think that is a very serious subject for Americans to think about for our future.” Asked “if the president had known then what he knows now, he would have still taken us to war?” Rockefeller answers: “I can’t answer that question. I just ask—the question I ask is, why isn’t he, and maybe he is, why isn’t he as angry about his decision, so to speak his vote on this, as I am about mine?” [PBS, 7/9/2004]Supporting the Claim of Iraq's Attempt to Purchase Nigerien Uranium - The report states flatly that senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson made the decision to send her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate false claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The CIA has demonstrated that Plame Wilson did not make that decision (see February 19, 2002). However, as well as claiming that Plame Wilson sent Wilson to Niger, it claims that Wilson’s report, far from disproving the assertion of an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium, actually bolstered that assertion. The report states that the question of Iraq’s attempt to buy Nigerien uranium remains “open.” It also says Wilson lied to the Washington Post in June 2004 by claiming that the documents used to support the claim were forgeries (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). “Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the ‘dates were wrong and the names were wrong’ when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the report states. Wilson told committee members he may have been confused and may have “misspoken” to some reporters (see May 2, 2004). The committee did not examine the documents themselves. [Washington Post, 7/10/2009] The committee made similar claims a year before (see June 11, 2003 and July 11, 2003 and After). Progressive reporter and columnist Joshua Micah Marshall disputes the report’s claim that Wilson’s trip to Niger actually helped prove the assertion that Iraq tried to buy Nigerien uranium. The intelligence reports making the assertion are “fruits of the same poison tree” that produced so many other false and misleading claims, Marshall writes, and were based on the assumption that the forged documents were genuine. [Joshua Micah Marshall, 7/10/2004] In 2007, Plame Wilson will write, “What was missing from the [committee] report was just as telling as the distortions it contained. The ‘Additional Views’ section… had concluded” that she was responsible for sending Wilson to Niger. Yet that was contradicted by a senior CIA official over a year before. Plame Wilson will call the “Additional Views” section “a political smear if there ever was one,” crammed with “distortions and outright lies. Yet it continues to be cited today by Joe’s critics as proof of his lack of credibility.” The Wilsons learn months later that committee Democrats decided not to fight against the attacks on Wilson’s integrity; according to one of the senior Democratic senators on the panel, there was simply too much “incoming” from the Republicans for them to fight every issue. There were “far too many serious substantial disputes” that needed solving, and the Democrats chose to allow the attacks on Wilson to proceed without comment. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 187-190]Portion of the Report Delayed - Roberts and other Republican majority committee members were successful in blocking Democrats’ attempts to complete the second portion of the report, which delineates the Bush administration’s use of the intelligence findings. That report will not be released until after the November 2004 presidential election. Rockefeller says he feels “genuine frustration… that virtually everything that has to do with the administration” has been “relegated to phase two” and will be discussed at another time. The second part of the committee’s investigation will focus on the “interaction or the pressure or the shaping of intelligence” by the Bush administration, Rockefeller says. “It was clear to all of us that the Bush administration had made up its mind to go to war,” he says, and he believes that such a “predetermination” influenced the intelligence community. Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says she hopes a similar House investigation would address some of those issues. However, she notes, she has been stymied by House Republicans in even launching that investigation. “There has not been the cooperation that there apparently has been on the Senate side,” she says. She has just now managed to wangle a meeting with House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss (R-FL), who is being touted as the next director of the CIA (see September 24, 2004). Harman says, “I would hope we could address [the issues] factually and on a bipartisan basis, but at the moment I don’t have a lot of confidence in it.” [CNN, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004] Roberts’s spokeswoman Sarah Little later says that the committee has not yet decided whether the second portion of the report will be fully classified, declassified, or even if it will hold hearings. [National Journal, 10/27/2005]Cheney, Roberts Colluded in Interfering with Report - Over a year later, the media will find that Roberts allowed Cheney and members of his staff to interfere with the committee’s investigation and dramatically limit its scope (see October 27, 2005). Rockefeller will say that he made three separate requests for White House documents during the committee’s investigation, but never received the documents he asked for. “The fact is,” Rockefeller will say, “that throughout the Iraq investigation any line of questioning that brought us too close to the White House was thwarted.” Rockefeller’s spokesperson, Wendy Morigi, will say that Rockefeller will “sadly come to the conclusion that the Intelligence Committee is not capable of doing the job of investigating the fundamental question as to whether the administration has misused intelligence to go to war.” [National Journal, 10/30/2005] Plame Wilson will write: “In the coming months, many reliable sources told us that before the report was issued, there was considerable collusion between the vice president’s office and… Roberts on how to craft the report and its content. So much for checks and balances and the separation of powers.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 192]

Author Clifford May, a former Republican National Committee staffer and a well-known television pundit, lambasts former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s new book, The Politics of Truth (see April 2004). May, who has written derisively about Wilson before (see September 29, 2003), opens by accusing Wilson of publishing a “quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover” that contains little substance and is based largely on “a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair.” He derides Wilson’s lengthy experience as a diplomat (see July 31, 1990, August 1-2, 1990, August 6, 1990, August 8-9, 1990, September 20, 1990, and January 12, 1991) by calling him “the guy who makes sure the embassy plumbing is working and that the commissary is stocked with Oreos and other products the ambassador prefers.” Most notably, May comes to the conclusion that Wilson himself, and not the White House, outed his wife Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, a conclusion he says was reached by a “bipartisan Senate committee report.” May is referring to the recent report by the Senate Intelligence Committee (see July 9, 2004). He repeats many of the committee’s erroneous assertions, including the allegation that Wilson’s wife was responsible for the decision to send Wilson to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). In regards to President Bush’s State of the Union assertion that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), May writes, “We now know for certain that Wilson was wrong and that Bush’s statement was entirely accurate.” He goes on to assert that the forged documents used to support the Iraq-Niger uranium story were likely “planted in order to be discovered—as a ruse to discredit the story of a Niger-Iraq link, to persuade people there were no grounds for the charge. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm.” May even says that Wilson’s report bolstered the belief that the uranium story might be true. He repeats his earlier charges that Wilson is an incompetent partisan whom the CIA had no business sending to Niger in the first place. He never explains exactly how Wilson outed his own wife as a CIA agent, though he does assert, wrongly, that Plame Wilson was never an undercover agent (see Fall 1992 - 1996) and therefore no one broke the law in revealing her status as a CIA official. [National Review, 7/12/2004] In 2004, Wilson will write of May’s assertion that his wife’s CIA status “was supposedly widely known” throughout Washington, “[I]f what May wrote was accurate, it is a damning admission, because it could have been widely known only by virtue of leaks among his own crowd.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 443-444]

While reviewing reports from Iraq, senior CIA case officer and WMD expert Valerie Plame Wilson admits a fellow CIA officer into her office. In 2007, Plame Wilson will recall: “His round face was flushed and his eyes, behind glasses, looked close to tears. I had worked with him for the last two years, through many stressful days, and I had never seen him so emotional or distressed.” After she closes the door, he says tightly, “They twisted my testimony.” Plame Wilson is not sure what he is talking about. ”I recommended Joe for the trip, don’t you remember?” he continues. “I told the committee this, but they didn’t include it in the report.” Plame Wilson realizes that the officer is talking about the recently released report from the intelligence committee on the prewar intelligence used to justify the Iraq invasion (see July 9, 2004), and referring to her husband, Joseph Wilson. She will write: “So when… the reports officer came to my office a day after the [committee] report came out, he confirmed what I had felt to be true—that I had not suggested Joe at all—but was afraid to voice without knowing for sure. He also reminded me of how the phone call to [another CIA officer] had started this chain of events (see February 13, 2002). A wave of apprehension swept over me. I wanted to urge my colleague to come forward again with the truth, but I couldn’t tell him what to do—it would be witness tampering.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 192-193]

Conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status in a column a year earlier (see July 14, 2003), regarding the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report on the administration’s use of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq (see July 9, 2004), observes that its “most remarkable aspect… is what its Democratic members did not say.” Novak claims that committee Democrats do not dispute that Iraq tried to discuss purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger. They did not agree to the report’s conclusion that Plame Wilson suggested her husband, Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding mission to Niger, a conclusion that is false (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and Mid-July, 2004), but neither did they defend Wilson’s denials of his wife’s involvement. Novak writes: “According to committee sources, Roberts felt Wilson had been such a ‘cause celebre’ for Democrats that they could not face the facts about him.… Now, for Intelligence Committee Democrats, it is as though the Niger question and Joe Wilson have vanished from the earth.” [CNN, 7/15/2004]

Several days after CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s conversation with the junior records officer who confirmed that he was the one to suggest that Plame Wilson’s husband go to Niger (see After July 12, 2004), the officer shows Plame Wilson a crumpled copy of a memo he has written, stating that his Senate testimony had been twisted, and that he, not her, had suggested Joseph Wilson for the Niger trip. Plame Wilson will write, “I was filled with gratitude.” The officer says he had asked his supervisor if he could testify to the Senate a second time and was flatly turned down. Plame Wilson will write: “With the clear wisdom of hindsight, I should have immediately approached the senior management of CPD [the CIA’s counterproliferation division] and asked for their support to correct the report’s omission of the junior CPD’s testimony. I should have aggressively pushed for an investigation into how the report distorted the issue of how and why Joe was selected for the mission to Niger. I should have asked to make a photocopy of my colleague’s memo, and put it into a safety deposit box for safekeeping. I should have asked my former supervisor to clarify his role in Joe’s selection.… But I did none of these things. I was much too passive, feeling boxed in, afraid of repercussions. If I spoke out I would lose my job. If I didn’t, it might doom my marriage. It was a miserable time for me and Joe—both of us existing in separate but connected rooms in hell.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 193-194]

The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed declaring that since the Senate Intelligence Committee has “exposed” former ambassor Joseph Wilson’s “falsehoods” about his trip to Niger to explore the allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see July 9, 2004), it is time for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to “close up shop” and stop his investigation into who outed Wilson’s wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. The Journal declares that if “an administration official cited nepotism truthfully in order to explain the oddity of Mr. Wilson’s selection for the Niger mission, then there was no underlying crime” in outing Plame Wilson. “[T]he entire leak probe now looks like a familiar Beltway case of criminalizing political differences. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should fold up his tent.” The Journal also repeats the baseless conclusion of the Republican authors of the committee report that stated Wilson’s findings in Niger actually provided “some confirmation” of the Iraq-Niger deal. [Wall Street Journal, 7/20/2004] In 2007, Plame Wilson will write that she is in her CIA office when she reads the op-ed. She recalls realizing that the entire thrust of the attempt to smear her husband is “to derail the leak investigation, which was sniffing dangerously close to the White House. Now I understood the ferocity of the attacks on Joe.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 192]

US District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, presiding over the grand jury investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003), rejects arguments that the First Amendment protects reporters from either Time or NBC News from testifying in the investigation. Hogan cites the 1972 Supreme Court case, Branzberg v. Hayes, in his ruling. In Branzberg, the Court ruled that “we cannot accept the argument that the public interest in possible future news about crime… must take precedence over the public interest in pursuing and prosecuting those crimes.” Hogan finds Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see May 21, 2004) in contempt of court. He also finds Time itself in contempt, and fines the magazine $1,000 a day until Cooper complies with a subpoena for his testimony. The ruling was written on July 20, but only issued today. “The information requested,” Hogan explains in his decision, “is very limited, all available means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for completion of the investigation, and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt.” Cooper’s employer, Time magazine, will appeal Hogan’s ruling, but many believe the appeals court will not overturn it. “I think we’re going to have a head-on confrontation here,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “I think Matt Cooper is going to jail.” Cooper’s lawyer Floyd Abrams says: “[Cooper’s] story was essentially critical of the administration for leaking information designed to focus the public away from what Ambassador [Joseph] Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband] was saying was true and toward personal things. That sort of story, about potential government misuse of power, is precisely the sort of thing that is impossible to do without the benefit of confidential sources.” [New York Times, 8/10/2004; Washington Post, 8/10/2004; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] NBC reporter Tim Russert, also subpoenaed, did not contest the subpoena; the press learns today that he has already testified before the grand jury (see August 7, 2004 and August 9, 2004). Observers believe that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is preparing to use Hogan’s ruling to compel the testimony of two other reporters, Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003) and Walter Pincus (see August 9, 2004). One defense lawyer involved in the case says Hogan’s ruling gives Fitzgerald significant leverage to compel testimony from Novak and Pincus. “This is now open season on these reporters,” he says. The court’s ruling establishes unequivocally that “in a grand jury context, reporters don’t have a privilege.” NBC News president Neal Shapiro says, “Compelling reporters to reveal their newsgathering to government investigators is, in our view, contrary to the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press.” Dalglish says Fitzgerald should be focusing on prying information from Bush administration officials rather than reporters. Referring to administration officials, Dalglish says, “You just can’t tell me none of the people appearing before the grand jury knows who the leaker was.” [Washington Post, 8/10/2004]

A few days after the Supreme Court’s refusal to quash the subpoenas of two reporters in the Valerie Plame Wilson case (see June 27, 2005), Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, pass one of the reporters, Matthew Cooper, on the street. Cooper buttonholes Wilson and, obviously struggling with himself, asks, “Could you do something for me?” Cooper asks Wilson if he would write the judge who ruled against Cooper and fellow reporter Judith Miller (see August 9, 2004) a letter asking for leniency for him. Wilson, whom his wife will describe as “taken aback,” tells Cooper that he will ask his lawyer about the request. Over dinner, the Wilsons marvel over Cooper’s request. They wonder if “Matt [had] momentarily lost his mind.” Plame Wilson will write: “A request from Joe for leniency on Matt’s behalf would carry little or no weight with the presiding judge. More pointedly, it was obviously in our interest to have the reporters testify. We, along with the entire country, wanted to hear what they would say under oath. We wanted to know what sources in the administration had leaked my name to the media, thereby undermining our national security.” More generally, Plame Wilson will reflect: “In the debate over whether reporters should be compelled to reveal their sources, it seemed to me that some of the leading advocates of reporters’ First Amendment rights had lost sight of a basic fact in this case: people in the administration had used reporters to advance their own political agenda. That alone is not unusual, or even criminal. But the reporters’ refusal to testify would not help to uncover government wrongdoing, but assist officials who wanted to cover up their illegal behavior. It was the Pentagon Papers (see March 1971) or Watergate (see June 15, 1974) turned on its head.… [T]his particular case was not about the freedom of the press, or about reporters’ roles as watchdogs on behalf of the governed, the citizens of this country. These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation. It didn’t make much ethical sense to me.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 220-221]

Daily Kos logo as posted on official Twitter account. [Source: Daily Kos via Twitter]Former ambassador Joseph Wilson gives a statement to the liberal blog “Daily Kos” regarding the incarceration of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to testify in the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 6, 2005). Wilson says: “The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability that infects the Bush White House from top to bottom. President Bush’s refusal to enforce his own call for full cooperation with the special counsel [Patrick Fitzgerald] has brought us to this point. Clearly, the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House than coming clean on a serious breach of national security. Thus has Ms. Miller joined my wife, Valerie, and her 20 years of service to this nation as collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to challenge the president on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa. The real victims of this cover-up, which may have turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution, and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly.” Wilson tells Daily Kos blogger Susan Gardner, who posts under the moniker “SusanG,” why he gave the blog his statement instead of following the more traditional path of releasing it to the mainstream media: “In my America, when companies get big and lazy, competion arises. That is what is happening with the blogs. The press… has gotten fat and lazy. The blogs are now driving the stories. It is the American way!” [Susan Gardner, 7/6/2005]

Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff reveals that White House political strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper’s source in revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Isikoff learns that Rove was Cooper’s source from Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove has given Cooper permission to testify about their conversations surrounding Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, and anonymously confirms his identity as the source. There is no indication in Cooper’s notes or e-mails to suggest that Rove knew Plame Wilson was a covert operative. However, Isikoff notes, “it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published.” A “source close to Rove” says, “A fair reading of the [Cooper] e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false.” In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write that Luskin’s confirmation is “part of Karl’s and Luskin’s strategy.” Luskin continues to publicly insist that Rove never actually leaked Plame Wilson’s identity. [Newsweek, 7/10/2005; McClellan, 2008, pp. 261] He tells a Washington Post reporter that while Rove mentioned someone he identified as “Wilson’s wife,” he never actually identified her to Cooper by name. Rove also identified Plame Wilson, falsely, as the person who sent Wilson to Niger on behalf of the CIA (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/11/2005]

David Gregory. [Source: TopNews (.us)]In light of the revelation that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was a source for a reporter in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 10, 2005), the White House press corps grills press secretary Scott McClellan unmercifully on the entire issue. Plame Wilson will reveal a modicum of sympathy for the beleaguered McClellan, whom she will note “endured what had to be one of his hardest days on the job as reporters competed to ask the next question.” The reporters are eager to pry information out of McClellan and are exasperated at his refusal to answer questions in any depth. Fire Rove? - One of the most probing questions involves the White House’s promise to fire anyone involved in the leak (see September 29, 2003). Asked, “Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?” McClellan responds that the White House is not going to comment on an ongoing investigation, an answer the gathered reporters find less than satisfactory. “Excuse me,” the reporter continues, “but I wasn’t actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak. And I just want to know, is that still his position?” McClellan continues to deflect the question with the standard “refusal to comment on an ongoing investigation” line. He also refuses to answer the direct question, “Did Karl Rove commit a crime?” McClellan Cleared Rove, Others of Culpability - Another reporter, apparently NBC’s David Gregory, asks why McClellan told reporters that Rove, along with National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams and the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were definitely not involved in the leak. “[Y]ou said, ‘I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this’—do you stand by that statement?” McClellan confirms he said that “as part of helping the investigation move forward on the investigation we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.” The reporter calls McClellan’s response “ridiculous,” and says: “The notion that you’re going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?” When McClellan says he will go into further detail “at the appropriate time,” Gregory interjects, “Why are you choosing when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?” McClellan begins, “If you’ll let me finish—” and Gregory cuts him off, saying: “No, you’re not finishing—you’re not saying anything. You stand at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American public, he did, indeed, talk about [Wilson’s] wife, didn’t he?” McClellan continues to refuse to answer. Later in the conference, he is asked if “you will be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved would be let go?” McClellan says he “will be glad to talk about it at that point.” Ordered to Stop Talking? - Another reporter, following up on Gregory’s relentless questioning, asks: “When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?” McClellan answers vaguely, “Back in that time period.” The reporter then notes that “the president commented on it nine months later (see June 10, 2004). So was he not following the White House plan?” Again, McClellan refuses to answer. Another reporter tries a different tack, asking, “Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove?” McClellan answers that “those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigative side while it’s ongoing.” When Did Bush Know? - McClellan is asked bluntly, “When did the president learn that Karl Rove had—” to which McClellan interrupts with, “I’ve responded to that question.” Changing the Subject - McClellan then calls on Raghubar Goyal of the India Times, who he is sure will ask a foreign policy question having nothing to do with Rove or Plame Wilson. He manages to keep the subject more or less off of Rove for the remainder of the conference. Plame Wilson will recall, “I almost felt sorry for McClellan, who was perspiring and had that deer-in-the-headlights look to him.” [White House, 7/11/2005; Wilson, 2007, pp. 223-227]Change in Media Focus - After this press conference, as Plame Wilson will note, the press begins issuing far more skeptical reports on the leak and its investigation, depending less on White House spin about the Wilsons’ supposed culpability and zeroing in on the roles of Rove, Libby, and other White House officials. Plame Wilson will recall that for the first time, the pressure was easing off of them and being refocused onto the White House. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 227-228]McClellan: Press Conference 'Brutal,' 'Humiliating' - McClellan will later characterize the press conference as “brutal.” He calls NBC’s Gregory “mocking” when Gregory asks whether he still stands by his old assertions of no involvement by Rove (see September 29, 2003), Lewis Libby (see October 4, 2003), and Elliott Abrams (see October 5, 2003). ABC’s Terry Moran is incredulous that McClellan would try to hide behind a refusal to “comment on an ongoing investigation.” McClellan will later write, “Eventually, long after leaving the White House, I came to see that standing in front of the speeding press bus in those days had much more to do with protecting the president and the White House from further political embarrassment than respecting the sanctity of the investigation.” McClellan will reflect that it was during this press conference, as he felt his “reputation crumbling away, bit by bit,” that he began to lose his “affection for the job.” He will write: “The ridicule I received that day and the following ones, though dispiriting and humiliating, was justified, given what I had previously said. Since my hands were tied (see July 10, 2005), about all I could do was go into a defensive crouch.” After the conference, McClellan receives a brief verbal apology from Rove. McClellan will write, “It’s clear to me, Karl was only concerned about protecting himself from possible legal action and preventing his many critics from bringing him down.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 260-261]

Time reporter Matthew Cooper testifies before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003 and July 1, 2005). [Washington Post, 7/3/2007] “I testified openly and honestly,” Cooper says after the session. “I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That is something the special counsel is going to have to determine.” [New York Times, 7/14/2005] Four days later, Cooper will write of his testimony for Time, though special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told him he would rather Cooper remained silent. Cooper is under no legal obligation not to divulge his grand jury testimony. He will say that while grand juries are famously passive, ready to “indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them,” this one is unusually active. About a third of the questions he answers are from jurors, not prosecutors. Cooper testifies that in the week after Joseph Wilson’s now-famous op-ed disclosing the fraudulence of the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see July 6, 2003), the administration had done something it rarely does: admit a mistake. It was admitting that it had erred in using that claim to advance its arguments for war with Iraq (see July 8, 2003). That was big news, and Cooper, having been at Time less than a month, was aggressively covering it. He was curious about the White House’s apparent efforts to smear Wilson, and called White House political adviser Karl Rove on July 11 to discuss the apparent smear campaign (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). The jury is interested, and apparently amused, at Cooper’s choice of words regarding the status of his conversation with Rove: “double super secret background.” Cooper concludes, “So did Rove leak Plame’s name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘WMD’? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don’t know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me. At this point, I’m as curious as anyone else to see what Patrick Fitzgerald has.” [Time, 7/17/2005]

A source from within the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation confirms that White House political adviser Karl Rove had spoken with conservative columnist Robert Novak before Novak published his column identifying Plame Wilson as a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003 and July 14, 2003). Rove discussed Plame Wilson with Novak. However, according to the source, Rove first heard about Plame Wilson from Novak, as well as learning from Novak that she had played a role in recommending her husband, Joseph Wilson, for a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003). According to the source, Novak, not Rove, initiated the conversation about Plame Wilson. It is not clear who revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Novak, or whether Novak has identified that source to the grand jury. [New York Times, 7/15/2005; New York Times, 7/16/2005] In its reporting, the New York Times publicly reveals the July 8, 2003 conversation between Rove and Novak (see July 8, 2003). [New York Times, 7/15/2005] Novak has disputed Rove’s version of events, saying that Rove confirmed Plame Wilson’s identity to him and not the other way around (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004).

Prosecutors in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak case (see December 30, 2003) become intensely interested in a 2003 State Department memo (see June 10, 2003) detailing how former ambassador Joseph Wilson—Plame Wilson’s husband—was chosen to journey to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The memo also sheds light on the role Wilson’s wife played in his selection. Prosecutors are trying to learn whether White House officials learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from the memo, if any officials then leaked her name to the press, and if those officials were truthful in their testimony about the memo. It is possible that the memo could show that the State Department told the White House of Plame Wilson’s identity as an undercover CIA agent before July 6, 2003, when Wilson publicly lambasted the Bush administration’s justification for war with Iraq in a New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003). It is as yet unclear who actually saw the memo, or whether it was the original source of information for whoever gave Plame Wilson’s name to conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003). Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer is also a person of interest in the investigation. Prosecutors want to know how much detailed information he had about the State Department memo. [New York Times, 7/16/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward criticizes the investigation into the identity leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003); he has also withheld his knowledge of the case from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005). Woodward tells a CNN audience: “I’m not sure there’s any crime in all of this. The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail. People had pled guilty. In other words, there was a solid evidentiary trail. I don’t see it here.… Well, it may just be politics as usual. I mean, [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove’s defenders say, look, the evidence is, and the evidence is, that he was saying Joe Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband], who was criticizing the administration on weapons of mass destruction really had an ax to grind and got his job because his wife had worked at the CIA and recommended him, so there’s fuzziness to this.” [Media Matters, 11/16/2005]

Former State Department official Marc Grossman, who has testified that he is one of the officials who divulged former CIA covert official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to former White House aide Lewis Libby (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), tells reporters that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger (see March 4-5, 2002) had nothing to do with Plame Wilson being Wilson’s wife, as many of Libby’s defenders assert. Grossman wrote a memo detailing Wilson’s trip to Niger (see June 10, 2003) that was given to Libby and other White House officials. Grossman, speaking anonymously, says: “It wasn’t a Wilson-Wilson wife memo. It was a memo on uranium in Niger and focused principally on our [the State Department’s] disagreement” with the White House. The memo noted, erroneously, that Plame Wilson helped engineer Wilson’s trip to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003), but Grossman says it did not identify her as an undercover CIA agent, nor did it identify her as Valerie Plame, which was her maiden name and cover name at the CIA. Grossman says the fact that the CIA official and Wilson were a married couple was largely an incidental reference. [Associated Press, 7/20/2005] Grossman will be revealed as the anonymous source who speaks to reporters at this time in April 2006. [Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006]

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, writes jailed reporter Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005) a chatty two-page letter that asserts he had wanted her to testify about their conversations all along. Miller is jailed pending her reversal of a decision not to reveal Libby as a confidential source; Libby had told Miller that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Libby’s letter comes after rounds of intensive negotiations between his lawyers, Miller’s lawyer Robert Bennett, and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Libby says that he is glad to grant Miller a waiver of confidentiality which will allow her to testify about their conversations (see September 12, 2005), and says that a year earlier his lawyer had assured her lawyer that he had then waived confidentiality (see January 2-5, 2004). He reassures her that his decision to waive confidentiality is completely voluntary, and says he will actually be “better off” if she testifies. In conclusion, Libby writes: “You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life.” [Libby, 9/15/2005 ; New York Times, 9/29/2005] Miller will deny any hidden meaning in Libby’s last few lines, and deny to Fitzgerald that Libby attempted to “shape” her testimony in any way through the letter. [New York Times, 10/16/2005] Bennett will say he does not believe that Libby was trying to influence Miller’s testimony, but knew as soon as he read his letter that it would “be trouble” for her. “I know that the letter bothered [Judy] and it bothered me,” Bennett says. “She might be soon testifying, and a prosecutor might construe that as an attempt to influence her testimony. It was more probably just sort of a dumb thing to put in a letter.” Bennett will add: “I think it is important that Judy was protecting a source in terms of source confidentiality and the journalistic privilege. She was not protecting a source to prevent someone from going to jail. The letter just didn’t help matters.” [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

Karl Rove (right) and his lawyer, Robert Luskin. [Source: Doug Mills / The New York Times]White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove testifies for a fourth time before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). [Washington Post, 10/15/2005; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Rove amends and clarifies his earlier testimony, most notably his failure to remember outing Plame Wilson to Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spends a large portion of Rove’s session focusing on the omission. In earlier testimony, Rove attempted to claim that he had only a “hazy recollection” of hearing Plame Wilson’s name (see October 15, 2004) before reading Robert Novak’s column which publicly outed her as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003). He now testifies that he informed Cooper of her status as a CIA agent days before the article appeared, and his memory apparently failed him during his earlier statements to the grand jury. Rove testifies that his recollection was prompted by the discovery of an e-mail message to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, that he wrote after talking to Cooper (see March 1, 2004). [National Journal, 10/7/2005; New York Times, 10/15/2005] He insists that he never identified Plame Wilson by her name, but “merely” as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and did not intentionally reveal her as a covert CIA official because he did not know of her clandestine status. [Washington Post, 10/15/2005] He says he may have learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from fellow White House official Lewis Libby, and says that both he and Libby learned of her CIA employment status from reporters. He says someone else outside the White House also told him of Plame Wilson’s identity, but he cannot remember who that was. [Washington Post, 10/20/2005] Previously, Rove insisted that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from reporters, and not the other way around, as many reporters and others have already testified. Rove has said that one of the reporters who told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA official was Novak, a statement Novak has contradicted (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Rove also testified that he never told Cooper Plame Wilson’s name, but merely identified her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. [Associated Press, 7/15/2005]Rove's Testimony No Distraction, White House Officials Claim - White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Rove’s testimony has not distracted the administration from its usual affairs: “[W]hile there are other things going on, the White House doesn’t have time to let those things distract from the important work at hand.” [New York Times, 10/15/2005] White House chief of staff Andrew Card concurs. “Well, obviously we’re all human beings and we know that there are external activities that impact the environment you’re working in,” he says. “It is something that is there, but it is something that we don’t talk about because it would be inappropriate.… I haven’t found anyone that is distracted because of the ongoing investigation, but we all know that it’s taking place and we’re all working to cooperate with the investigators.” [Washington Post, 10/15/2005]Lawyer: Rove 'Always Honest' with FBI, Jury, President - Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, says that his client “has always attempted to be honest and fully forthcoming” to anyone “he has spoken to about this matter, whether that be the special prosecutor or the president of the United States. My client would not hide anything, because he has nothing to hide. It would not be to his benefit to do so.” Previously, Rove had failed to disclose his discussion with Cooper to either the FBI or to President Bush (see After September 26, 2003). [National Journal, 10/7/2005] “The special counsel has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.” [Washington Post, 10/15/2005]Fitzgerald Mulling Criminal Charges against Rove - Sources close to the Fitzgerald investigation say Rove’s statements to Bush and to the FBI are at the heart of the decision whether or not to charge him with making false statements to investigators, or with obstruction of justice. Lying to the president could in itself be worthy of charges. Law professor Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor and assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, says: “The president is the top law enforcement official of the executive branch. It is a crime to make a false statement to a federal agent. If the president was asking in that capacity, and the statement was purposely false, then you might have a violation of law.” However, if Bush had discussed the matter with Rove in a more informal capacity, then, Little says, a case for making false statements to a federal agent would be more difficult to prove. Law professor Randall Eliason says that if Rove deliberately lied to the president, a prosecutor could construe the lie as an “overt act… in furtherance of a criminal plan.” Law professor Stephen Gillers notes: “Misleading the president, other officials of the executive branch, or even the FBI might not, in and of themselves, constitute criminal acts. But a prosecutor investigating other crimes—such as obstruction of justice or perjury—might use evidence of any such deception to establish criminal intent. And a lack of candor might also negate a claim of good faith or inadvertent error in providing misleading information to prosecutors.” [National Journal, 10/7/2005]

David Wurmser, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, begins cooperating with the investigation into the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent. This follows the news that another Cheney aide, John Hannah, is also cooperating (see Before October 17, 2005). The news that Wurmser is cooperating comes from sources close to the investigation. He is expected to provide special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald with evidence that the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity was part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). Wurmser is Cheney’s adviser on Middle East affairs, and formerly served as an assistant to then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton (see May 29, 2003). The sources say Wurmser is cooperating in order to negate potential criminal charges for his role in exposing Plame Wilson’s identity. Wurmser was a key member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG—see August 2002), the propaganda group that operated primarily out of Cheney’s office. The sources say that in June 2003, Wurmser and Hannah were ordered by their superiors in Cheney’s office to leak Plame Wilson’s name and CIA identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson. In 2004, Wurmser was questioned by the FBI for his role in divulging classified national security information to Israel, an investigation that included Hannah and several prominent neoconservatives in the Defense Department. Wilson says: “John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice president’s office, have both been suggested as sources of the leak.… Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level.” [Raw Story, 10/19/2005]

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak is running the risk of moving too far, too fast, and may end up jailing Bush administration officials without good cause. Kristof cites two Republican-driven investigations from the 1990s—the “fanatical” Kenneth Starr investigation of former President Clinton and the “appalling” 10-year pursuit of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros—to warn that the Fitzgerald investigation, like those he cites from the 1990s, may be moving into murkier areas than originally warranted, i.e. the investigation into who leaked the name of a clandestine CIA agent. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may be “considering mushier kinds of indictments,” Kristof writes, “for perjury, obstruction of justice, or revealing classified information. Sure, flat-out perjury must be punished. But if the evidence is more equivocal, then indictments would mark just the kind of overzealous breach of prosecutorial discretion that was a disgrace when Democrats were targeted. And it would be just as disgraceful if Republicans are the targets.” Kristof acknowledges that White House officials “behaved abominably in this affair,” and says, “the idea of a government official secretly using the news media… to attack former Ambassador Joseph Wilson [is] sleazy and outrageous. But a crime? I’m skeptical, even though there seems to have been a coordinated White House campaign against Mr. Wilson” (see October 1, 2003). “My guess is that the participants in a White House senior staff meeting discussed Mr. Wilson’s trip and the charges that the administration had knowingly broadcast false information about uranium in Niger—and then decided to take the offensive. The leak of Mrs. Wilson’s identity resulted from that offensive, but it may well have been negligence rather than vengeance.” Kristof doubts that anyone in the White House knew that Plame Wilson was an undercover agent, and believes that “some official spread the word of Mrs. Wilson’s work at the CIA to make her husband’s trip look like a nepotistic junket.” He calls such behavior “appalling,” and says that columnist Robert Novak “was absolutely wrong to print the disclosure” (see July 14, 2003). “But there’s also no need to exaggerate it,” he concludes. The entire Plame Wilson affair is an example of “backstabbing politics,” he writes, “but not… obvious criminality.” Therefore, Fitzgerald should be wary of handing down indictments, both in the interest of legal restraint and for fear that indicting “White House officials on vague charges of revealing classified information… will have a chilling effect on the reporting of national security issues.” [New York Times, 10/25/2005]

Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley writes in the online magazine Slate that he finds the entire Niger-Plame-Libby issue “confusing” and incoherent. After mocking a variety of aspects of the case (“Niger, which is not Nigeria,” the “Pynchonesque… mysterious beauty” of the surname “Plame,” the forgettable blandness of the name Joe Wilson, and the nickname “Scooter,” or perhaps “Snooker” or “Snotty,” of accused leaker Lewis Libby), and portraying the entire issue as the plot of a forgettable film noir or perhaps a Shakespeare knockoff, he calls the “whole prosecution nuts.” [Slate, 10/28/2005]

Screen graphic from CNN’s coverage of Lewis Libby’s indictment. [Source: CNN / Flickr]Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby is accused of “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA agent, to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), and then lying about it to the FBI and to a grand jury empaneled by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see December 30, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Libby immediately resigns his position as Cheney’s chief of staff. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; CNN, 5/14/2006; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]Five Counts of Obstruction, Two Counts of Perjury - Libby is indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of perjury. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] Though the original investigation was of the Plame Wilson leak, Fitzgerald says it is important to understand that Libby’s crimes, though not the prime focus of the initial investigation, should be prosecuted as well. “Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts,” he says. The indictment does not charge Libby with knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert agent. [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Confirms that CIA Agent's Status Classified; Important to National Security - Fitzgerald confirms that the fact of Plame Wilson’s employment at the CIA was in and of itself classified information, and not to be shared to the media or the public. He says: “The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It’s important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation’s security.… [T]he damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). [New York Times, 10/28/2005; Nation, 3/16/2007]Libby Lied about Knowledge of Plame Wilson's Status, Indictment Charges - The indictment charges that Libby lied when he claimed that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see November 24, 2003, March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and August 7, 2004). Instead, the indictment charges, Libby learned about Plame Wilson and her possible role in sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) from a number of people, including an undersecretary of state (see June 10, 2003), a CIA officer who regularly briefed him on national security issues (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), an unidentified “senior CIA officer,” and from his superior, Cheney (see (June 12, 2003)). In his turn, Libby shared that information with several officials in the Office of the Vice President, including Cheney’s senior counsel David Addington (see July 8, 2003), Cheney’s national security adviser John Hannah (see May 29, 2003), and Cheney’s press secretary at the time, Cathie Martin (who may have actually informed Libby—see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003). “In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson” (see June 23, 2003), Fitzgerald says. “[T]o be frank, Mr. Libby gave the FBI a compelling story,” he adds. “It would be a compelling story that will lead the FBI to go away if only it were true. It is not true, according to the indictment.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; National Journal, 10/30/2005] (The unidentified “senior CIA officer” is later revealed to be Frederick Fleitz, who served both as a senior officer at the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) desk and as Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s chief of staff—see (June 11, 2003).) [Raw Story, 11/2/2005] Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney who writes for the progressive blog TalkLeft, notes that according to the indictment, the phrases used by Libby in his denials to the grand jury were nearly verbatim echoes of Cheney’s own denials as told to NBC’s Tim Russert in September 2003 (see September 14, 2003). [Jeralyn Merritt, 10/31/2005]Sought Information on Plame Wilson's CIA Status - The indictment also charges that Libby sought information from the CIA and the State Department about Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and tried to determine whether she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger. According to the indictment, Libby asked David Addington, the chief counsel to Cheney, “in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee’s spouse undertook an overseas trip.” The court papers do not say what action, if any, Addington may have taken in response to Libby’s request. [New York Times, 10/28/2005; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; National Journal, 12/16/2005]Discussed with Multiple Officials before Leaking to Reporters - In a press conference, Fitzgerald walks reporters and listeners through the indictment: from Libby’s learning of Plame Wilson’s identity from State Department and CIA sources and from Cheney, through his discussing it with at least three White House officials, all before the supposed “disclosure” from Russert. Libby subsequently lied to the FBI and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury about those discussions with government officials and again with Miller and Time reporter Matthew Cooper. “[H]e lied about it afterwards,” Fitzgerald says, “under oath and repeatedly.… [A]nyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct, and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Leak Seriously Jeopardized National Security - Fitzgerald tells reporters that the leaking of a CIA officer’s identity is a serious breach of national security. “This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter,” he says. “But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important.” Fitzgerald continues: “At a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone’s identity could be compromised lightly… [discourages] our ability to recruit people and say, ‘Come work for us… come be trained… come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you.” Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says: “Revealing the identity of a covert agent is the type of leak that gets people killed. Not only does it end the person’s career… it puts that person in grave personal danger as well as their colleagues and all the people they have had contact with.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; National Journal, 10/30/2005]Charges Are Serious, Not 'Technicalities' - Responding to a question about Republican charges that Libby is being charged as a “technicality,” and Fitzgerald “overreached” his authority in filing the indictment, Fitzgerald says: “That talking point won’t fly. If you’re doing a national security investigation, if you’re trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven… that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.… [T]he truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.… Any notion that anyone might have that there’s a different standard for a high official, that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice and perjury, is upside down.… If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it’s a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Explanation for Delay in Filing Indicitment - Fitzgerald gives one reason for the delay in filing the indictment against Libby. When asked why he went to such lengths to compel the testimony of reporters such as Miller (see September 30, 2005) and Cooper (see July 13, 2005), Fitzgerald replies that the rights of the accused are paramount in his mind. The testimony of Miller, Cooper, and other journalists could bolster the case against Libby, or could help exonerate him. The possibility that he might charge someone, only to learn later that one of the journalists who had declined to testify had information to clear the person, was something that “frightens me,” Fitzgerald says. “I think the only way you can do an investigation like this is to hear all eyewitnesses.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; National Journal, 11/12/2005]No Charges against Cheney - Asked whether the investigation found evidence of criminal acts by Cheney, Fitzgerald answers: “We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act. But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I’m not going to comment on anything.” Fitzgerald refuses to comment on whether White House political strategist Karl Rove or anyone else will be named as co-conspirators, charged, or even named in court. [New York Times, 10/28/2005]

After former White House official Lewis Libby’s indictment (see October 28, 2005), he retains the services of three of Washington’s most powerful attorneys: Theodore Wells, William Jeffress, and John Cline. [Boston Globe, 2/26/2006] (Cline will not officially join the defense team until mid-November.) [San Francisco Chronicle, 11/22/2005] Wells, who has successfully defended other government officials from criminal charges, is “an excellent choice,” according to criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt. Jeffress is a partner at Baker Botts, the law firm headed by former Secretary of State James Baker. [Jeralyn Merritt, 11/3/2005] Cline is an expert on classified government documents; according to former CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, he is “presumably hired to help the defense figure out how to ‘graymail’ the government, that is, force the government to choose between prosecuting an employee for serious crimes or preserving national security secrets.” Stanford University criminal law expert Robert Weisberg says of Cline’s addition to the team: “This is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the government. This suggests they are going to use a very concerted and aggressive strategy.” Legal Defense Fund Headed by GOP Fundraiser - Shortly after the indictment, Libby’s legal defense fund is created, headed by former GOP finance chief Melvin Sembler, a Florida real estate tycoon. Sembler is a highly successful fundraiser for Republican candidates, and is a close friend of Vice President Dick Cheney. Lobbyist and former Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, a close friend of Libby’s, recruited Sembler to head the fund. According to Comstock, Sembler “holds Scooter [Libby] in high esteem as many members of the committee have. We’re confident that Scooter will be exonerated. He has declared he’s innocent.” [Tampa Tribune, 11/24/2005] In her 2007 book Fair Game, Plame Wilson will note, “Sembler, ironically enough, was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Italy when the embassy in Rome first received the forged yellowcake documents, whose contents precipitated [Joseph Wilson]‘s trip to Niger and Libby’s legal odyssey.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 289-290] The first contribution to the defense fund comes from Richard Carlson, a former US ambassador, the former president of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and the father of conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. “He spent years in government service,” Carlson will later say of Libby, whom Carlson calls a friend. He “hasn’t made a lot of dough.” The fund will soon raise over $2 million, in part through a Web site, scooterlibby.com (see February 21, 2006). Comstock and former Cheney communications director Mary Matalin (see July 10, 2003 and January 23, 2004) are deeply involved in the fund. The fund’s board of directors and advisers is studded with prominent Republicans, including former Republican presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp; former senator, lobbyist, and actor Fred Thompson; former senator Alan Simpson; former Education Secretary William Bennett; Princeton professor Bernard Lewis, one of the driving intellectual forces behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq; former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; former Clinton Middle East envoy Dennis Ross; and former CIA Director James Woolsey, another neoconservative ally of Libby’s. [New York Times, 11/18/2005; San Francisco Chronicle, 11/22/2005; Boston Globe, 2/26/2006] Howard Leach and Wayne Berman, two top fundraisers for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, are also part of the defense fund. Comstock tells a New York Times reporter that because both Ross and Woolsey served in the Clinton administration, the Libby defense fund is a bipartisan entity. She adds that the amount of money raised by the fund will not be disclosed: “It’s a private trust fund for a private individual and we haven’t disclosed that.” [New York Times, 11/18/2005; Tampa Tribune, 11/24/2005]Plame Wilson Disappointed in Woolsey's Involvement - Plame Wilson will write of her disappointment that a former CIA director (Woolsey) could come to the defense of someone accused of outing a covert CIA agent. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 289-290]

The press learns that UN Ambassador John Bolton was contacted in May 2003 by Lewis Libby to find out who sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and May 29, 2003). Bolton was the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs when Libby contacted him. The progressive news Web site Raw Story learns of the Bolton contact from lawyers involved in the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak, and from documents posted on the investigation’s Web site. The lawyers say that two former Libby aides, John Hannah and David Wurmser, informed special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of Libby’s inquiry to Bolton (see Before October 17, 2005 and Before October 19, 2005). At the time, Wurmser was on loan from Bolton’s office and serving as a Middle Eastern affairs aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby. Both Hannah and Wurmser have been cooperating with Fitzgerald’s investigation, the lawyers say. MSNBC has reported that Bolton testified before the Plame Wilson grand jury. Wurmser, the lawyers say, has been cooperating for fear that he would be charged for his role in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity; Hannah began cooperating after learning that he had been identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak. Raw Story writes: “It is unclear whether Bolton played any other role in the Plame outing, but his connection to the Iraq uranium claims certainly gave him a motive to discredit Wilson, who had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. A probe by the State Department inspector general revealed that Bolton’s office was responsible for the placement of the Niger uranium claims in the State Department’s December 2002 ‘fact sheet’ on Iraq’s WMD program.” The lawyers say it is doubtful that the information Hannah and Wurmser have provided will ever be made public, but their information was crucial to Fitzgerald’s investigation because it allowed him “to put together a timeline that showed how various governmental agencies knew about Plame [Wilson]‘s covert CIA status.” [Raw Story, 11/2/2005]

Retired Army General Paul Vallely, a military analyst employed by Fox News (see Early 2002 and Beyond, Late September 2003, April 14-16, 2006, and April 18, 2006), says that former ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed his wife’s status as a CIA official over a year before she was exposed by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003). Vallely’s claims are published by WorldNetDaily (WND), an online conservative news site, after Vallely makes the claims on an ABC Radio talk show hosted by conservative commentator and blogger John Batchelor. Fox News has described Vallely as an expert on psychological warfare (see April 21, 2003). Vallely says Wilson openly discussed his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA official between three and five times in 2002, while the two waited to appear on various Fox News broadcasts. Both Vallely and Wilson served as analysts for Fox News during the US’s run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Vallely says the first time Wilson discussed his wife’s CIA status was in the spring of 2002. “He was rather open about his wife working at the CIA,” Vallely says. “He was a total self promoter,” Vallely continues. “I don’t know if it was out of insecurity, to make him feel important, but he’s created so much turmoil, he needs to be investigated and put under oath.” Vallely also says that several acquaintances of his at the CIA have said Wilson routinely introduced his wife as a CIA official at Washington cocktail parties and social events. “That was pretty common knowledge,” he says. “She’s been out there on the Washington scene many years.” If she were a covert agent, Valley says (see Fall 1992 - 1996), “he would not have paraded her around as he did.” Vallely concludes, “This whole thing has become the biggest non-story I know, and all created by Joe Wilson.” Conservative lawyer Victoria Toensing agrees that Plame Wilson is most likely not a covert agent for the agency. WND does not report Wilson’s response to Vallely’s charges, and in several critical references to a Vanity Fair interview given by the Wilsons (see January 2004) the blog misidentifies the date of the interview publication as 2005, not 2004. [WorldNetDaily, 11/5/2005]CIA Confirmed Plame Wilson's Covert Status - The CIA has repeatedly confirmed Plame Wilson as a covert official, and many observers both inside and outside the agency have noted the extensive damage caused by her exposure (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). Fox News, Conservative Blogs Report Claims - Three days after Vallely’s claims appear on WND, Fox News reports Vallely’s statements. [Fox News, 11/8/2005] And a day after the WND article, Batchelor announces on prominent conservative blog RedState that another analyst will confirm Vallely’s claims. Batchelor says that on November 7, Vallely and retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney will “repeat and expand upon Vallely’s memory that Joe Wilson more than once in 2002 in the green room at Fox New Channel in Washington, DC, boasted about his wife the ‘CIA desk officer.’ McInerney has the same memory and more, since both he and Vallely were on FNC between 150 and 200 times in 2002 each.” [John Batchelor, 11/6/2005]Wilson Demands Retraction, Counters Claim - Wilson’s attorney, Christopher Wolf, e-mails both Vallely and WND demanding that they retract Vallely’s statements, writing that “the claim that Ambassador Wilson revealed to you or to anyone that his wife worked for the CIA is patently false.” In the e-mail, Wolf includes a message Wilson sent him: “This is slanderous. I never appeared on [TV] before at least July 2002 and only saw him maybe twice in the green room at Fox. Vallely is a retired general and this is a bald faced lie. Can we sue? This is not he said/he said, since I never laid eyes on him till several months after he alleges I spoke to him about my wife.” Vallely Modifies Original Claim, Others Refuse to Confirm - Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that in subsequent days, Vallely modifies his original claims, backing down to claim that Wilson revealed his wife’s CIA status on “only one occasion,” which “probably was in that summer, early fall” of 2002. And promises that two other military analysts, retired generals McInerney and Barry McCaffrey, will back up his claims go unfulfilled, as neither is willing to publicly state that Wilson ever spoke to them about his wife. Vallely later says he has not spoken to the FBI about his claims, and tells conservative talk show host Sean Hannity that he waited two years to make the claims because “I figured Joe Wilson would self-destruct at some point in time.” He tells Hannity that he has been “upset” by Wilson’s opposition to the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. [Media Matters, 11/9/2005] Batchelor’s promise that fellow conservative commentator Victor Davis Hansen will also confirm the claim also goes unfulfilled. [John Batchelor, 11/6/2005] WND notes, “But contrary to a report, Hanson said Wilson did not disclose his wife’s CIA employment” during their conversations. [WorldNetDaily, 11/8/2005]Fox News Schedule Shows Vallely, Wilson Never Appeared Together - Progressive blogger John Amato and former CIA agent Larry Johnson pore through the Fox News schedule for the time period Vallely cites—the spring of 2002—and find that Vallely and Wilson never appeared together during that time. Johnson writes: “They were never in the studio on the same day, much less the same program. Vallely is lying or maybe having a senior moment.” [John Amato, 11/7/2005]

Victoria Toensing, a former deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, writes a guest editorial for the Wall Street Journal that demands the Plame Wilson investigation, as it stands, be closed. Instead, she says, the CIA should be investigated for causing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to become public knowledge. Toensing blames the CIA’s “bizarre conduct” for Plame Wilson’s exposure. The CIA is responsible for Plame Wilson’s exposure, Toensing states, by allowing her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger to look into claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Toensing writes that Plame Wilson “suggested” her husband for the trip (see February 13, 2002, February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). The CIA did not have Wilson write a report, but instead conducted an oral debriefing (see March 4-5, 2002, (March 6, 2002), and March 8, 2002) that, Toensing writes, was never sent to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office (see March 5, 2002). Wilson’s subsequent New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003) was not approved or vetted with the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board, something Toensing finds puzzling even though she notes that Wilson was not asked to sign a nondisclosure or confidentiality agreement. She also alleges, without giving specifics, that the statements in Wilson’s op-ed do not jibe with the information in the CIA’s report on his trip, though that report is classified and not available for her inspection. For the CIA to allow Wilson to write the op-ed was, Toensing says, tantamount to giving a green light for Plame Wilson’s exposure as a CIA official. Conservative colunnist Robert Novak, who publicly exposed Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), was told by “a still-unnamed administration source” (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003) that Wilson’s wife “suggested him for the assignment,” leading Novak to uncover Plame Wilson’s identity. Toensing also claims that Novak was never asked not to publish Plame Wilson’s name in anything but the most “perfunctory” fashion (see (July 11, 2003) and Before July 14, 2003). Toensing defends her allegation by writing: “Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.” Toensing goes on to note that the CIA permitted Plame Wilson to make political contributions under the name “Wilson, Valerie E.,” contributions recorded by the Federal Elections Commission. Toensing concludes, “The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft,” and demands that Congress conduct an investigation into the CIA’s conduct. [Wall Street Journal, 11/3/2005] The Journal does not inform its readers that Toensing was one of a group of lawyers and conservative activists who filed an amici curiae brief with the court asking that it overturn its decision to compel the testimony of two lawyers in the Plame Wilson investigation (see March 23, 2005).

Conservative Washington lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey publish a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal defending the Bush administration, and specifically the indicted Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), for their actions in the Plame Wilson identity leak. No crime was committed, Rivkin and Casey allege, and no legal ethics were breached. Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA official was moot because, Rivkin and Casey write, “she was not a covert agent—a readily ascertainable fact that should have concluded special counsel Fitzgerald’s investigation almost as soon as it got underway” (see Fall 1992 - 1996). In fact, Rivkin and Casey write, exposing Plame Wilson’s role in her husband Joseph Wilson’s 2002 mission to Africa (see February 19, 2002, February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005) “was relevant to an accurate understanding of his later allegations against the administration.” In general, the lawyers state, it is not a crime to expose an intelligence official’s “classified” status, only genuine covert agents. Since Plame Wilson was not a covert agent, by Rivkin and Casey’s standards, no crime was committed in exposing her as a CIA official. And even had she been, they continue, certainly no damage could have been done by her exposure (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). When Wilson decided to publish his New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003), the lawyers write, he “eliminated whatever shreds of anonymity” Plame Wilson retained. The lawyers conclude that “the revelation of Ms. Plame [Wilson]‘s connection to the CIA was a public service, neither criminal nor unethical.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/4/2005]

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas writes a profile of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who is now suspected of leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Thomas writes that he doubts either Cheney or Libby were “conspiring to trash” former ambassador Joseph Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA officer. Instead, Thomas writes, “it is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic. It’s also a good bet that they did not foresee the disastrous consequences of their conversation (see (June 12, 2003)), as well as a series of others between Libby and government officials and several reporters in the summer of 2003. Libby, as well as his boss, operated, at least in their own minds, on a higher plane.” Thomas paints Libby as committed to “duty and honor,” and identifying with “Roman centurions and Plato’s Men of Silver, idealized guardians who cared nothing for celebrity or money but lived only to serve.” Libby idealizes former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and has compared Cheney to Churchill, who defied English politicians in the 1930s to agitate against the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler. So, too, is Cheney taking definitive action against the rising threat of Islamist terrorism, Thomas writes, and Libby is determined to assist him. Outing Plame Wilson was “foolish” and centered in “hubris,” Thomas notes, but puts it down to Libby’s “heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history,” and his going over the line in service to his country. “[I]t is… likely that Libby was caught up in an ancient trap of the best and the brightest,” Thomas writes, “the belief that they do not have to play by normal rules when they serve a higher calling, and that small lies can be told to protect higher truths.” [Newsweek, 11/7/2005]

The National Review publishes an editorial by Cesar Conda, an assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney from January 2001 to September 2003. Conda writes a glowing defense of indicted perjurer Lewis Libby, whom he worked with in Cheney’s office. Conda notes that he was not “personally close” to Libby, and says he has not spoken to him since December 2004. Conda claims no access to the Libby defense team, nor any knowledge of the Libby defense strategy. However, he writes, “I have my own observations of the man, and some commonsense arguments that should to be considered as they relate to the indictment.” Conda calls the portrayal of Libby in special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of him (see October 28, 2005) a “caricature” that “is utterly at odds with his professional and personal history.” Libby, Conda writes, “is honorable, discreet, selfless—a man of unquestionable integrity. Most of his professional career has been spent in public service, as a behind-the-scenes, yet invaluable staffer at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.” Libby served in Cheney’s office “at great personal sacrifice,” according to Conda, choosing to leave “a lucrative private law practice” and “compromis[ing] family time with his two grade-school children—to focus his energies on his all consuming job in the White House.” Conda goes into detail about Libby’s overwhelming workload, a key element of the Libby defense team’s “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). According to Conda, Libby should be expected to misremember some “fleeting” conversations he may have had with reporters about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s wife, CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, July 10 or 11, 2003, October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Conda claims that Wilson is at the heart of the Libby indictment, and accuses him of falsifying his report about the Iraq-Niger uranium hoax (see March 4-5, 2002 and July 6, 2003). Conda concludes by praising Libby as a man whose “noble” goal was “to protect the American people from terrorism.” [National Review, 11/10/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward testifies under oath in a sworn deposition to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald concerning his knowledge of the identity of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see December 30, 2003), and how he came upon that knowledge. Woodward testifies that he spoke “with three current or former Bush administration officials” in regards to his book Plan of Attack. He testifies for two hours under an agreement that he will only discuss matters specifically relevant to Fitzgerald’s investigation, and with written statements from each of the three administration officials waiving confidentiality “on the issues being investigated by Fitzgerald.” Woodward’s name came to Fitzgerald’s attention after one of the three officials, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, told Fitzgerald that he had revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Woodward (see June 13, 2003 and After October 28, 2005). In his story for the Post about his testimony, Woodward does not reveal Armitage’s identity, but it is soon disclosed by other sources (see March 14, 2006). Woodward spoke with a second administration official, whose identity he also does not disclose, and with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but says he did not discuss Plame Wilson with either Libby or the other official (see June 23, 2003). He testifies that he did not discuss Plame Wilson with any other government officials (see June 20, 2003) before Robert Novak publicly outed her on July 14 (see July 14, 2003). Woodward notes, “It was the first time in 35 years as a reporter that I have been asked to provide information to a grand jury.” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Investigative reporters for the progressive news Web site Raw Story identify National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as Woodward’s source for Plame Wilson’s identity, a claim echoed by the Times of London. Hadley refuses to answer questions on the topic. [Raw Story, 11/16/2005; London Times, 11/20/2005] In 2006, the National Security Council will refuse to directly deny Hadley’s involvement, and will request that Raw Story attribute denials to the White House and not to itself.) [Raw Story, 3/19/2006]Woodward Told Second Reporter about Plame Wilson - Woodward testifies that he told another reporter about Plame Wilson: “I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at the Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.” Pincus says he has no memory of Woodward telling him anything about Plame Wilson, and says he would certainly have remembered such a conversation, especially since he was writing about Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson, at the time (see June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, and (July 11, 2003)). “Are you kidding?” Pincus says. “I certainly would have remembered that.” Pincus believes Woodward is confused about the timing and the nature of their conversations; he remembers Woodward making a vague allusion to Plame Wilson in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. Pincus recalls Woodward telling him that he was not the only person who had been contacted. Libby Lawyer: Woodward's Testimony Undermines Case against Client - Lewis Libby’s lawyer, William Jeffress, says Woodward’s testimony undermines the case Fitzgerald is building against his client (see October 28, 2005). “If what Woodward says is so, will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this information to a reporter?” Jeffress says. “The second question I would have is: Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson’s wife?” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005]Plame Wilson 'Deeply Disappointed' in Woodward - In 2007, Plame Wilson will write, “I was deeply disappointed that [Woodward] had chosen to react as a journalist first and a responsible citizen only when his source ‘outed’ him to the special prosecutor.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 238]

Time reporter Viveca Novak testifies under oath in the Plame Wilson leak investigation, in an interview at her lawyer Hank Schuelke’s office. Novak has already spoken with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see November 10, 2005) about her conversations with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House aide Karl Rove (see March 1, 2004), but did not inform her editors of either her conversations with Luskin or her discussion with Fitzgerald until after Fitzgerald asked her to testify under oath. In late November, she informed Time bureau chief Jim Carney, who informed managing editor Jim Kelly. As Novak will later write, “Nobody was happy about it, least of all me.” Before her testimony, various leaks about her involvement in the investigation began appearing in the press, making her “feel physically ill.” Novak also rechecked her notes and found that she had misinformed Fitzgerald about the date of her conversation with Luskin concerning Rove: it was most likely March 1, 2004 and not May 2004. Novak will later write that the second interview is “more focused” than the first one, and her responses are, if anything, even more confused and vague than during her first interview. “I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when,” she will later write. Fitzgerald again focuses on her exchanges with Luskin, sticking to their previous agreement “not to wander with his questions.” [Associated Press, 12/8/2005; Time, 12/11/2005] The leaks about Novak apparently began with Luskin, who told Fitzgerald that Novak inadvertently alerted him last year that her colleague, Matthew Cooper, would have to testify that Rove was his source for an article about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Investigative reporter Jason Leopold writes that it seems Luskin is trying to derail a potential criminal indictment of Rove (see December 7, 2005). [CounterPunch, 12/9/2005]

According to sources with firsthand knowledge, alleged perjurer Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, has given indications of the nature of his defense in his upcoming trial (see January 16-23, 2007). Libby will tell the court that he was authorized by Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials to leak classified information to reporters to build public support for the Iraq invasion and rebut criticism of the war. Prosecutors believe that other White House officials involved in authorizing the leak of classified information may include former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House political strategist Karl Rove. Libby has already made this claim to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 24, 2004). As he told the grand jury, Libby will claim that he was authorized to leak classified information to rebut claims from former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war. Libby allegedly outed Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent, as part of the White House’s effort to discredit Wilson. Libby is not charged with the crime of revealing a covert CIA agent, but some of the perjury charges center on his denials of outing Plame Wilson to the FBI and to the grand jury. Libby has admitted revealing Plame Wilson’s identity to reporter Judith Miller (see August 6, 2005); he also revealed classified information to Miller. Risk of Implicating Cheney - Law professor Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor, says it is surprising that Libby would use such a defense strategy. “One certainly would not expect Libby, as part of his defense, to claim some sort of clear authorization from Cheney where none existed, because that would clearly risk the government’s calling Cheney to rebut that claim.” Reporter Murray Waas writes that Libby’s defense strategy would further implicate Cheney in the White House’s efforts to discredit and besmirch Wilson’s credibility (see October 1, 2003), and link him to the leaks of classified information and Plame Wilson’s CIA identity. It is already established that Libby learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Cheney and at least three other government officials (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003 and (June 12, 2003)). Similarities to North's Iran-Contra Defense Strategy - Waas compares Libby’s defense strategy to that of former Colonel Oliver North, charged with a variety of crimes arising from the Iran-Contra scandal (see February 1989). Libby’s defense team includes John Cline, who represented North during his trial. Critics call Cline a “graymail” specialist, who demands the government disclose classified information during a trial, and uses potential refusals to ask for dismissal of charges. Cline won the dismissal of many of the most serious charges against North when Reagan administration officials refused to declassify documents he said were necessary for North’s defense. The special counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation, Lawrence Walsh, believed that Reagan officials refused to declassify the documents because they were sympathetic to North, and trying North on the dismissed charges would have exposed further crimes committed by more senior Reagan officials. It is likely that Cline is using a similar strategy with Libby, according to Waas. Cline has already demanded the disclosure of 10 months’ worth of Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), some of the most highly classified documents in government (see January 31, 2006). The Bush administration has routinely denied requests for PDB disclosures. A former Iran-Contra prosecutor says: “It was a backdoor way of shutting us down. It was a cover-up by means of an administrative action, and it was an effective cover-up at that.… The intelligence agencies do not declassify things on the pretext that they are protecting state secrets, but the truth is that we were investigating and prosecuting their own. The same was true for the Reagan administration. Cline was particularly adept at working the system.” Michael Bromwich, a former associate Iran-Contra independent counsel and a former Justice Department inspector general, says it might be more difficult for the Bush administration to use a similar strategy to undercut special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, because Fitzgerald was appointed by the attorney general, not a panel of judges as were Walsh and Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Both Walsh and Starr alleged that they were impeded by interference from political appointees in the Justice Department. Bromwich’s fellow associate Iran-Contra counsel William Treanor, now the dean of Fordham University’s Law School, agrees: “With Walsh or Starr, the president and his supporters could more easily argue that a prosecutor was overzealous or irresponsible, because there had been a three-judge panel that appointed him,” Treanor says. “With Fitzgerald, you have a prosecutor who was appointed by the deputy attorney general [at the direction of the attorney general]. The administration almost has to stand behind him because this is someone they selected themselves. It is harder to criticize someone you yourself put into play.” [National Journal, 2/6/2006]'This Is Major' - Progressive author and columnist Arianna Huffington writes: “This proves just how far the White House was willing to go to back up its deceptive claims about why we needed to go to war in Iraq. The great protectors of our country were so concerned about covering their lies they were willing to pass out highly classified information to reporters. And remember—and this is the key—it’s not partisan Democrats making this claim; it’s not Bush-bashing conspiracy theorists, or bloggers reading the Aspen roots (see September 15, 2005). This information is coming from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as filed in court papers. This is major.” [Huffington Post, 2/9/2006]

Slate reporter John Dickerson, who formerly worked for Time magazine during the initial Plame Wilson identity leak investigation coverage, writes of his knowledge of, and participation in, the investigation, including his knowledge that White House official Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to Dickerson’s colleague, Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Dickerson co-wrote a July 2003 Time article with Cooper (see July 17, 2003) that led to Cooper’s subpoena from the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation (see August 9, 2004 and September 13, 2004), his being held in contempt of court (see October 13, 2004), and his eventual testimony (see July 13, 2005). However, Dickerson was never subpoenaed to testify before the Fitzgerald grand jury. He writes that he accompanied the gaggle of reporters with President Bush on his trip to Africa in July 2003, and of the extensive time spent by two “senior administration official[s]” telling him how partisan and unreliable Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson is, and how he should investigate what “low-level” CIA official sent Wilson to Niger (see July 11, 2003). “I thought I got the point,” Dickerson writes. “He’d been sent by someone around the rank of deputy assistant undersecretary or janitor.” Dickerson goes on to observe, “What struck me was how hard both officials were working to knock down Wilson” (see October 1, 2003). After returning from the trip, Cooper told Dickerson that Rove had informed him of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity. “So, that explained the wink-wink nudge-nudge I was getting about who sent Wilson,” Dickerson writes. Cooper and Dickerson were careful, Dickerson writes, to ensure that other reporters would not learn of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from either of them. And Dickerson did not want to encroach on Cooper’s arrangement with Rove. Dickerson writes: “At this point the information about Valerie Plame was not the radioactive material it is today. No one knew she might have been a protected agent—and for whatever reason, the possibility didn’t occur to us or anyone else at the time. But it was still newsworthy that the White House was using her to make its case. That Scooter Libby and Karl Rove mentioned Plame to Matt was an example of how they were attempting to undermine Wilson. They were trying to make his trip look like a special family side deal not officially sanctioned by the agency.” [Slate, 2/7/2006; Slate, 2/7/2006] In 2007, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer will testify that he informed Dickerson of Plame Wilson’s identity (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), a statement that Dickerson will dispute. [Slate, 1/29/2007]

The progressive Internet news site Washington Note writes a follow-up to the day’s revelation that the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA agent caused heavy damage to the CIA’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons program (see February 13, 2006). The Note reports that, according to its source, Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, included information about Iran’s nuclear program in the report from his 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and March 4-5, 2002). Note reporter Steve Clemons says he cannot be sure of the accuracy of the claim, “so please take the following with a grain of salt until further sourced.” Clemons describes his source as “[s]omeone with knowledge of the classified report that Joe Wilson ‘orally’ filed after his now famed investigative trip to Niger.” Wilson allegedly included two notes in his debriefing that related to Iran and its possible activities in Niger. Clemons writes that “various intelligence sources” speculate that if Iran was indeed attempting to acquire Nigerien uranium, it would be to avoid “the international intelligence monitoring of Iran’s domestic mining operations.” Wilson, according to the source, may have reported that Iran, not Iraq, tried to acquire 400 to 500 tons of Nigerien uranium (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001). Clemons writes that the notes from Wilson’s Niger debriefing have been destroyed, making it much harder to verify the claims. [Washington Note, 2/13/2006]

Shortly after the press learns that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has withheld White House e-mails from the Fitzgerald investigation (see February 15, 2006), the White House turns over some 250 pages of e-mails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. The e-mails were sent during the spring of 2003 by senior Cheney aides, and pertain to the leak of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity to the press. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald reveals the “discovery” of the missing e-mails in court. According to reporter Jason Leopold, the contents of the e-mails are “explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence.” According to Leopold’s sources, the e-mails could also prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004 (see May 8, 2004). Cheney told investigators that he knew nothing of any effort to discredit Wilson or to expose his wife’s undercover status to reporters. However, the e-mails indicate that Cheney led an effort to discredit Wilson that began in March 2003, and used the CIA to dig up information on Wilson that could be used to dirty his reputation in the press (see March 9, 2003 and After). Some of the e-mails refer to Plame Wilson’s identity and CIA status, and reference the US military’s inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The e-mails also contain suggestions from Cheney’s senior aides, and from staffers of the National Security Council, as to how the White House should respond to Wilson’s criticisms of the administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence. Fitzgerald has been attempting to secure the “missing” e-mails since late January (see January 23, 2006). Gonzales is still refusing to turn over some of the e-mails, citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. [Truthout (.org), 2/24/2006; Associated Press, 2/27/2006] On February 28, the Wall Street Journal will write that the e-mails have been in the Libby team’s possession since February 6, and that they contain nothing pertinent to the trial (see February 6, 2006).

In a court hearing, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald argues that Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996) is irrelevant to the perjury charges pending against former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005). “We’re trying a perjury case,” Fitzgerald tells Judge Reggie Walton. Even if Plame Wilson had never worked for the CIA at all, Fitzgerald continues, even if she had been simply mistaken for a CIA agent, the charges against Libby would still stand. Furthermore, Fitzgerald tells Walton, he does not intend to offer “any proof of actual damage” caused by the disclosure of Plame Wilson’s identity. Libby’s defense lawyer Theodore Wells objects to Fitzgerald’s statement, saying that in the actual trial, Fitzgerald will likely tell the jury that the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity either damaged or could have damaged the CIA’s ability to gather critical intelligence (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). Wells says he may call either Plame Wilson, her husband Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), or both to testify in the case, as well as CIA employees. “I might call Ms. Wilson” to testify, he says. “I might call her husband. There are going to be CIA employees as witnesses in this.… Was she just classified because some bureaucracy didn’t declassify her five years ago when they should have?” Wells asks if Plame Wilson may have been “classified based on a piece of paper.” One anonymous source tells a National Review columnist: “She was definitely undercover by agency standards at the time in question. That was a classified bit of information, and is sufficient as far as the agency is concerned to bring it to the attention of the Justice Department. You can argue whether she should have been, but as far as the agency was concerned it was classified.” [National Review, 2/27/2006] In his statement to the court, Fitzgerald notes: “[T]he issue is whether [Libby] knowingly lied or not. And if there is information about actual damage, whatever was caused or not caused that isn’t in his mind, it is not a defense. If she turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee, it’s not a defense if you lie in a grand jury under oath about what you said and you told people, ‘I didn’t know he had a wife.’ That is what this case is about. It is about perjury, if he knowingly lied or not.” [Truthout (.org), 3/18/2006]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, still embroiled in controversy over his attempts to disprove the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), attends the National Day festivities in Morocco. While standing alone, he is approached by an American who identifies himself as a “leading member of the Washington evangelical movement.” Wilson expects to be reviled and lambasted, as has happened so many times before during his encounters with members of the Christian right. Instead, the man grasps his hand and whispers, “You should know that there are many of us that support you.” A surprised Wilson asks why, and the man replies, “[B]ecause we believe in truth, and we know that this government has lied.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 174-175] Wilson will not identify the evangelical; it is not clear that he knows the man’s identity.

Defense lawyers for former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005) file papers asserting that Libby had not intentionally deceived FBI agents (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) because Plame Wilson’s role was was only “peripheral” to potentially more serious questions regarding the Bush administration’s use of intelligence in the prewar debate. The papers reiterate earlier defense requests for classified CIA and White House documents for Libby’s defense. Referring to Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the White House’s manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and the White House’s strategy to counter such criticism (see June 2003 and October 1, 2003), the attorneys tell the court, “The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson’s criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department, and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq’s WMD capabilities.” Plame Wilson’s identity was disclosed during “a period of increasing bureaucratic infighting, when certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability,” the attorneys write. “The White House and the CIA were widely regarded to be at war.” The defense lawyers also assert that Libby “believed his actions were authorized” and that he had “testified before the grand jury that this disclosure was authorized,” a reference to the classified intelligence he leaked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see February 2, 2006). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/17/2006 ; National Journal, 3/30/2006] According to criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, Libby is asking for the documents to bolster his “memory defense” strategy (see January 31, 2006). She writes: “Shorter Libby: My memory is bad because I was so embroiled in internal fighting and finger pointing at the White House about why we didn’t find any WMD’s that the Plame/Wilson matter was a trifling detail in comparison.” [Jeralyn Merritt, 3/18/2006]

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald responds to the Lewis Libby defense team’s third motion to compel the discovery of a huge number of classified documents (see March 17, 2006), including Presidential Daily Briefings, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002), and a raft of CIA documents. Judge Reggie Walton has already allowed the discovery of some of the requested documents (see March 10, 2006). Fitzgerald writes that Libby is seeking “nearly every document generated by four large executive branch entities relating to Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger” (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and notes that such a request is overly broad, unnecessary for a perjury defense, and relies on an incorrect reading of the law. The request, Fitzgerald writes, “is premised on relevance arguments which overlook the fact that defendant is charged with perjury, not a conspiracy to commit various other crimes.” Hence the requsted documents go “far beyond the scope of what is relevant to the charges contained in the indictment.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/5/2006 ; New York Sun, 4/7/2006]

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald files a brief with the court that states unequivocally that the White House orchestrated an attempt to besmirch the character and integrity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, and October 1, 2003). The New York Times describes Wilson as “the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration’s case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.” Bush, Cheney at Heart of Smear Campaign - Fitzgerald’s court filing places President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney directly at the center of the controversy, which erupted when conservative columnist Robert Novak used information from White House sources to “out” Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA agent (see July 14, 2003). According to Fitzgerald, the White House engaged in “a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson.” The filing concludes, “It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish Wilson.’” Fitzgerald’s portrait of events is at odds with the Bush administration’s narrative, which attempts to portray Wilson as a minor figure whose criticism of the Iraq invasion comes from his personal and political agenda. Fitzgerald is preparing to turn over to the defense lawyers for Lewis Libby some 1,400 pages of handwritten notes—some presumably by Libby himself—that should bolster Fitzgerald’s assertion. Fitzgerald will file papers in support of his assertion that Bush ordered the selective disclosure of parts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (see October 1, 2002) as part of the White House’s attempt to discredit Wilson. Fitzgerald: Cheney Headed Campaign - Fitzgerald views Cheney, not Bush, as being at what the Times calls “the epicenter of concern about Mr. Wilson.” Fitzgerald notes that Wilson’s op-ed in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003) “was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq.… Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson’s wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson’s credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism.” Neither Bush’s then-National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, nor Rice’s deputy and eventual successor, Stephen Hadley, knew of the information declassification, Libby indicates. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/5/2006 ; Los Angeles Times, 4/7/2006; New York Times, 4/11/2006; National Journal, 6/14/2006; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]Bush Authorized Leak of Classified Intelligence - Fitzgerald’s filing also states that, according to Libby’s earlier testimony (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), Bush directly authorized the leak of classified intelligence to reporters as part of the Wilson smear campaign (see April 5, 2006). Democrats Dismayed at Allegations of Bush Involvement - Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) says: “After the CIA leak controversy broke three years ago, President Bush said, ‘I’d like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information.’ Now we find out that the president himself was ordering leaks of classified information.… It’s time for the president to come clean with the American people.” And in a letter to Bush, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, writes in part, “Two recent revelations raise grave new questions about whether you, the vice president and your top advisors have engaged in a systematic abuse of the national security classification process for political purposes.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/7/2006]

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, writes a letter to President Bush requesting a “full accounting” of two events that raise the question of whether the White House engaged in what Waxman calls “a systematic abuse of the national security classification process for political purposes.” Waxman is referring to recent press reports that Bush, through Vice President Dick Cheney, authorized former White House official Lewis Libby to leak classified information to reporters “in order to blunt criticism from former ambassador Joe Wilson about your improper use of intelligence in the run-up to war” (see April 5, 2006). He is also referring to recent allegations that Bush and his administration officials failed to alert the public that months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, they knew that claims of Iraqi nuclear weapons were likely false. Waxman asks for a full accounting of these matters, and for the declassification of the President’s Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (see October 1, 2002). [House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 4/6/2006] It is unclear whether Waxman ever receives a reply to his letter.

Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega addresses the claim that a president has the unilateral right to declassify information, in light of recent evidence that shows President Bush authorized the declassification of portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) for political purposes (see April 5, 2006 and April 9, 2006). De la Vega notes that when Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney declassified portions of the NIE to discredit war critic Joseph Wilson, Bush had officially begun his presidential re-election campaign, having already participated in fundraisers that had netted the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign over $10 million, and was working to raise almost $200 million more. Moreover, Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, misrepresented the NIE’s findings by telling reporter Judith Miller, falsely, that the NIE proved Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). De la Vega writes: “Is a president, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected—as well as false and misleading—portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a ‘former Hill staffer’ [Libby] to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper? The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon” (see July 27, 1974, July 29, 1974, and July 30, 1974). [TomDispatch (.com), 4/9/2006]

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporter Robert Scheer that neither he nor any of the State Department’s top experts believed that Iraq ever posed an imminent nuclear threat, contrary to the statements of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other top White House officials. Powell says that Bush followed the advice of Cheney and the CIA (see October 1, 2002) in making the claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) and taking the country to war in Iraq. Scheer asks Powell why, in light of the State Department’s own intelligence bureau correctly concluding that the claims that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger were false (see March 1, 2002, March 4, 2002, Mid-October 2002, and January 12, 2003), Bush ignored that information in making his case for war? Powell responds: “The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily (see March 7, 2003) and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote. That was a big mistake. It should never have been in the speech. I didn’t need [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson to tell me that there wasn’t a Niger connection. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I never believed it” (see January 26, 2003). Powell adds that the responsibility for pressing the argument that Iraq was a nuclear threat was not Bush’s; rather, “That was all Cheney.” In his article, Scheer asks, “Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?” [Truthdig, 4/11/2006]

At a speech before an audience of students at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, President Bush attempts to dodge a question from a student about special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s assertion that Bush’s White House had sought to retaliate against former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see April 5, 2006). The New York Times observes: “Mr. Bush stumbled as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question. He said he had ordered the formal declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003 because ‘it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches’ about Iraq’s efforts to reconstitute its weapons program. Mr. Bush said nothing about the earlier, informal authorization that Mr. Fitzgerald’s court filing revealed.” Bush concludes: “You’re just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that. It’s a serious legal matter that we’ve got to be careful in making public statements about it.” [New York Times, 4/11/2006]

A former senior government official says that President Bush’s selective declassification of portions of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE—see October 1, 2002) for political purposes (see April 5, 2006), as testified to by Lewis Libby (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), was a misuse of the classification process for political reasons. Bush and his top officials released certain sections of the NIE to journalists (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003) in an attempt to bolster their arguments in favor of invading Iraq, yet concealed other sections that showed how they misrepresented intelligence to suit their arguments. The former senior official says that the selective declassification was intertwined with the attempts to besmirch the reputation of war critic Joseph Wilson: “It was part and parcel of the same effort, but people don’t see it in that context yet.” The identify of the official is unstated. [National Journal, 4/6/2006] In 2007, Wilson’s wife, current senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, will write that she experiences “a rush of relief” upon reading a New York Times story that reveals the “selective declassification” and the Times’s conclusion that “[i]t is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to punish Wilson” (see April 5, 2006). [Wilson, 2007, pp. 244]

Lewis Libby’s defense team files a response to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s rejection of its demands for more classified documents (see April 5, 2006). Defense Lawyers Intend to Subpoena Wilson, White House Officials - In the filing, Libby’s lawyers indicate that they intend to call for testimony a number of people involved in the Plame Wilson leak, including former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), State Department official Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003), former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, and 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003), and former CIA Director George Tenet (see June 11 or 12, 2003, July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The defense would consider Wilson a “hostile witness” if they indeed subpoena his testimony. Many of these potential witnesses were also disclosed by the Libby team a month earlier (see March 17, 2006). Limiting Document Requests - The defense also agrees to limit its future document requests “to documents that are currently in the actual possession of the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] or which the OSC knows to exist.” Libby Claims No Memory of Key Conversation - Libby’s lawyers also assert that Libby remembers nothing of conversations he had with Grossman, in which Grossman has testified that he told Libby of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status (see May 29, 2003, June 10, 2003, 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/12/2006 ; Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006] However, sources close to the case say that “a half-dozen witnesses” have testified as to the accuracy of Grossman’s claims. A former State Department colleague of Grossman’s says: “It’s not just Mr. Grossman’s word against Mr. Libby’s. There were other people present at the meeting at the time when Mr. Grossman provided Mr. Libby with details about Ms. Plame’s employment with the agency. There is an abundance of evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has that will prove this.” Investigative reporter Jason Leopold observes: “The meeting between Libby and Grossman is a crucial part of the government’s case against Libby. It demonstrates that Libby knew about Plame Wilson a month or so before her name was published in a newspaper column and proves that Libby lied to the grand jury when he testified that he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters in July 2003.” [Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006]

A news article by the New York Sun claims that a June 2003 memo from then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman never indicated that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA official, or that her status was classified in any way (see June 10, 2003 and July 20, 2005). (Contrary to the Sun’s reporting, Plame Wilson was a NOC—a “non-official cover” agent—the most covert of CIA officials; see Fall 1992 - 1996, July 22, 2003, and September 30, 2003). The Sun bases its report on a declassified version of a memo provided to it through the Freedom of Information Act. The memo was drafted by the State Department’s head of its intelligence bureau, Carl Ford Jr., in response to inquiries by Grossman. Grossman sent the memo to various White House officials, including the then-chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby. Previous news reports have indicated that the memo was notated to indicate that the information it contained was classified and should not be made public, but according to the Sun, the paragraph identifying Plame Wilson as a CIA official was not designated as secret, while the other paragraphs were. Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, says the memo proves that neither Libby, Rove, nor any other White House official broke any laws in revealing Plame Wilson’s CIA status. The Sun also asserts that the memo proves Plame Wilson was responsible for sending her husband, Joseph Wilson, to Niger to find the truth behind claims that Iraq was trying to clandestinely purchase Nigerien uranium, an assertion Wilson calls “absolutely inaccurate” (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). [New York Sun, 4/17/2006] The CIA requested that Plame Wilson’s identity not be divulged (see (July 11, 2003) and
Before July 14, 2003), and the agency as well as former officials have acknowledged that the damage done by the disclosure of Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status was “severe” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006).

Slate reporter John Dickerson, who, as a member of the White House press corps, was cozened by the White House to join in its smear campaign against war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 11, 2003), tells his readers to donate to the Lewis Libby legal defense fund. Libby is facing perjury and obstruction charges over his participation in the White House-orchestrated exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Dickerson claims that his solicitation for donations for Libby is motivated by a desire for the truth to come out about the White House’s involvement in the Wilson smear campaign and the Plame Wilson exposure, writing: “Usually the public has to wait for the tell-all books published after a president leaves office for juicy depictions of the infighting, back-stabbing, and pettiness. But Libby’s trial, which starts in January, will offer a sneak preview. There will be memos and meeting notes about the most secret administration activities. And since the testimony from current and former Bush officials will be under oath, it’s likely to be closer to the truth than anything we’d ultimately find at the bookstore. The Bush administration has been so opaque and has dissembled so often that we should embrace anything that forces candor about the past or encourages it in the present.” Moreover, Dickerson writes, “Libby might need a hefty defense fund if the administration decides to throw him under the bus,” and notes, “If things had not gone a certain way for John Dickerson, he could have needed a fund, too” (see February 7, 2006). Dickerson writes that special counsel and government prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is not, as yet, being particularly forthcoming about the evidence he is collecting as part of his upcoming prosecution of Libby. To adequately mount his defense, Libby needs more access to Fitzgerald’s documents than he has previously been granted, and is battling in court to convince Judge Reggie Walton to force the disclosure of a wide array of government documents, many of which are classified. Dickerson writes: “I hope Libby wins this battle. The more we know about what went on before and after the invasion of Iraq, the better. And we want to see it now, while everyone’s memory is fresh and people can be put under oath.… The better job Libby’s defense team does compelling Fitzgerald to open his files, the better we’ll understand what went wrong.” [Slate, 4/17/2006]

William Jeffress, one of Libby’s lawyers. [Source: Life]The legal team for accused felon Lewis Libby admits to twice leaking information to the media (see April 12, 2006). The admissions are included in a filing submitted by Libby’s lawyers in response to Judge Reggie Walton’s threat to issue a gag order (see April 13, 2006). The threatened gag order was in response to multiple press leaks emanating from “unnamed sources” involved in the Libby trial. Libby’s lawyers oppose the proposed gag order, which would dramatically curtail the lawyers’ ability to speak to reporters about the legal proceedings; special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says he has no opinion on a gag order because his office does not talk to the media anyway. Libby’s lawyers acknowledge leaking two documents: Fitzgerald’s “correction” letter to an earlier statement implying that Libby had mischaracterized some of the elements of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (see October 1, 2002) to reporter Judith Miller, and information given to a Washington Post reporter to correct what lawyer William Jeffress believed was a misunderstanding on that reporter’s part that might have resulted in erroneous information being reported. First Leak - Libby’s lawyers say they released the Fitzgerald letter to the press “in good faith,” and do not believe the release goes against the court’s earlier restrictions on making information public. They write: “When we received the letter, we assumed that the government wanted to correct the public record. We thought the government was motivated to file the letter because the government had realized that the erroneous sentence in its brief was responsible for spawning false news reports and wholly unjustified conjecture about possible misdeeds by Mr. Libby and his superiors. Nothing about the letter indicated that it was not to be disclosed publicly. It was not designated as confidential under the protective order in this case, and it did not contain any
classified information.… When we received the letter, we simply assumed that it was a public filing that was intended to be entered in the public docket, because we believed its sole purpose was to correct inaccurate statements in a publicly filed brief. Accordingly, we swiftly disseminated it to the media—without any public statements by defense counsel—for the purpose of preventing the publication of any additional incorrect reports that Mr. Libby, the president, and/or the vice president had lied to the press and the public.” The lawyers deny releasing the letter for any “tactical advantage or for any other improper purpose.” Second Leak - Jeffress spoke with one of two Washington Post reporters, R. Jeffrey Smith or Jim VandeHei. The reporter apparently misunderstood the content of an argument in an earlier legal brief, and called Libby’s legal team to discuss the brief. The reporter intended to file a report showing that Fitzgerald’s evidence undermined Libby’s contention that no one in the Bush White House was overly concerned with the criticisms of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). Jeffress’s intent, he tells Judge Walton, was merely to ensure that the Post published an accurate news report that did not misconstrue the legal brief. Again, Jeffress says that he intended to gain no “tactical advantage” or “to interfere with a fair trial or otherwise prejudice the due administration of justice.” He was, he asserts, merely concerned that such an inaccurate report “would have been unfairly prejudicial to Mr. Libby.” Convincing Arguments? - Criminal lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the blog TalkLeft, says that she finds the rationales for the two leaks convincing, and doubts that Judge Walton will issue any gag order. [Jeralyn Merritt, 4/21/2006; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/21/2006 ; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/21/2006 ; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/21/2006 ]Not the Only Press Leaks? - Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler, who has covered the trial since before it started, contends that Libby’s team is trying to imply that these two leaks are the only ones it has made. She strongly disagrees with this implication, and says that while there is no way to know what, if any, information the Libby team has leaked to the press besides these two incidents, the entire trial is about carefully orchestrated press leaks and Libby’s perjury about said leaks, and says she doubts the Libby team’s contention that they have not leaked other information to any members of the press. [Marcy Wheeler, 4/22/2006]

Karl Rove discusses his testimony with his lawyers outside the grand jury chambers. [Source: CNN / ThinkProgress]White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove testifies before special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury for a fifth time. Rove partially waives his attorney-client privilege with his attorney, Robert Luskin, to allow Luskin to testify about conversations he had with Rove concerning Rove’s knowledge of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. Rove is also questioned extensively about the contradictions between his previous testimony and the testimony of Time reporter Matthew Cooper regarding Rove and Cooper’s July 2003 conversation about Plame Wilson (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), and his conversations with conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and July 14, 2003). [Washington Post, 4/27/2006; National Journal, 4/28/2006; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] According to Luskin, Rove “indirectly” confirmed Plame Wilson’s CIA status to Novak. [Washington Post, 7/15/2006]Changing Stories - Rove is asked how he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and the circumstances surrounding his leaking of that information to Cooper. Rove tells the jury that when he told Cooper that Plame Wilson was a CIA agent, he was merely passing along unverified gossip. Cooper has testified that Rove told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA agent, and that she played a role in sending her husband, Joseph Wilson, on a fact-finding mission to Niger in 2002 (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Cooper has testified that both Rove and Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, portrayed the information about Plame Wilson as definitive. It was because of their definitive statements, Cooper testified, that he identified Plame Wilson in a July 2003 story for Time (see July 17, 2003). In his first interview by the FBI, Rove failed to tell the investigators that he had talked to Cooper at all (see October 8, 2003); he again failed to disclose the conversation during his early appearances before the grand jury (see February 2004). Later, Rove testified that he did indeed speak with Cooper, and that his earlier failures to disclose the information were due to lapses in his memory (see October 15, 2004). In his fourth appearance before the grand jury, Rove testified that he revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to the reporter (see October 14, 2005), a recollection prompted by the discovery of an e-mail Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley soon after his leak to Cooper (see March 1, 2004). Rove has also testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from a journalist or journalists, a claim strongly contradicted by evidence. He has said in previous testimony that he may have learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Novak, who outed Plame Wilson in a July 2003 column (see July 14, 2003). Novak, however, has testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby and Rove. A person with first-hand knowledge of the grand jury proceedings will later comment, “If you believe both of them, Novak was saying that Rove was his source, and Rove was saying that Novak was his source.” [Washington Post, 4/27/2006; National Journal, 4/28/2006] Rove says that he still doesn’t remember talking to Cooper, though he does not dispute the e-mail he sent to Hadley. [Bloomberg, 4/28/2006] He argues that it would have been foolish for him to attempt to lie to the FBI and to the grand jury, because he knew that whatever lies he might have chosen to tell would have eventually been exposed, and he would then risk going to jail. [Washington Post, 4/27/2006] It is difficult to reconcile Rove’s “indirect” confirmation of Plame Wilson’s identity for Novak with his earlier claims that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Novak. Lawyer's Statement - Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin says in a written statement: “Karl Rove appeared today before the grand jury investigating the disclosure of a CIA agent’s identity. He testified voluntarily and unconditionally at the request of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to explore a matter raised since Mr. Rove’s last appearance in October 2005 (see October 14, 2005). In connection with this appearance, the special counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target of the investigation. Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges. At the request of the special counsel, Mr. Rove will not discuss the substance of his testimony.” [CNN, 4/26/2006; Washington Post, 4/27/2006]Difficulties in Proving Intent - Law professor and former federal prosecutor Dan Richman says that while Fitzgerald may well be trying to build a case against Rove for either perjury or obstruction of justice, it may be quite difficult to prove Rove intended to lie to the grand jury. Rove’s subsequent appearances before the jury might “prove to be an obstacle to any [potential] obstruction or perjury case in that the person ultimately cooperated and told what he knew,” Richman says. [National Journal, 4/28/2006]

Judge Thomas Hogan, who jailed former New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to name her source during the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see October 7, 2004), defends his decision during a meeting of the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association. Hogan, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan, is the chief judge for the Washington, DC, District Court. He tells the collected listeners that Miller had no First Amendment right to protect a source in a criminal matter. While the story began as a political ruckus, Hogan says, it quickly escalated into something more than merely politics. Between the politics of the case, the media involvement, and the legal ramifications, it became “the perfect storm,” he adds. War critic Joseph Wilson became a target of the White House. “Blood was spreading in the water. The sharks were gathering. It’s typical Washington politics, except that this involved the commission of a crime.” Hogan is referring to the public exposure of covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson after the White House leaked her identity to the press (see July 14, 2003). Hogan says of Miller: “She was an actor in the commission of a crime. She was part of the transfer of information that was a crime.” [Associated Press, 4/29/2006]

Judge Reggie Walton holds a hearing to discuss numerous issues surrounding the upcoming Lewis Libby trial. One of the key areas of discussion is the involvement and expected testimony of White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, October 8, 2003, October 15, 2004, October 14, 2005, and April 26, 2006). The Libby defense team wants to compel the disclosure of a raft of classified White House and CIA documents concerning Rove’s actions in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak, but special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, saying he does not intend to call Rove as a witness, is refusing to ask the White House for those documents (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, and (February 16, 2006)). Fitzgerald admits to being legally compelled to turn over any material he has on witnesses he intends to call, but will not agree to go after material regarding witnesses he does not intend to call, especially when that material may prove to be to the defense’s benefit. For Libby, lawyer Theodore Wells says he intends to call Rove as a witness, and he wants Fitzgerald to battle with the White House for documents pertaining to Rove’s involvement in the leak. Fitzgerald retorts, as he has before, that the material Wells and his team are asking for is not germane to a perjury defense. In the process, Wells falsely claims that a legal precedent exists for forcing a government prosecution to seek evidence the defense wants, and Walton is briefly taken in by his deception before learning that Wells is misrepresenting the case law. Fitzgerald says flatly: “I’m responsible for the government’s case… and turning over my obligations. I am not responsible for preparing the defense case. And the case law, and Your Honor cited it. It is material defined by the indictment and the government’s case in chief. You just can’t say I’m going to call 20 witnesses so give me everything about them. We then would have effectively open-file discovery or beyond that and I don’t agree with that reading of the law.” The conversation, especially on Fitzgerald’s part, is circumspect, with all parties well aware that the hearing is being held in open court. However, Walton is somewhat testy with Wells during one exchange. Referring to Wells’s stated intention to introduce former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s classified CIA report on the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see March 4-5, 2002), Walton says, “I don’t see how this is relevant to the case.” Any focus on Wilson’s report would turn the trial into an inquiry on “statements the president made in the State of the Union (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). You want to try the legitimacy of us going to war.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/5/2006 ; Bloomberg, 5/5/2006; Marcy Wheeler, 6/15/2006]Defense: Libby Small Part of Larger White House Operation - Wells makes a statement that indicates he and his fellow attorneys intend to try to prove that Libby was indeed a small part of a much larger White House operation. He says: “It wasn’t just him [Libby]. He was involved in what was a multi-agency response. It was [sic] Office of the Vice President. It was the Office of the President.” Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith calls Wells’s statement a “‘Hello, Karl’ moment,” and notes that Wells is trying to go in at least two different directions: Libby’s memory is demonstrably faulty (see January 31, 2006) and he is being made into a White House scapegoat. Smith observes, “Team Libby is going to have a very tough time indeed if they are going to play such substantially adverse ends of the spectrum against each other at trial in order to raise reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds.” [Christy Hardin Smith, 5/12/2006]Author: Defense May Not Intend to Call Rove, Maneuvering for Materials Instead? - Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler, who is closely following the case, will later write that she is not at all sure that Libby’s lawyers really intend to call Rove as a defense witness. “But they seem awfully interested in getting all the materials relating, presumably, to Rove’s conversation with [columnist Robert] Novak (see July 14, 2003). They sure seem interested in knowing what Rove said, and whether they can make certain arguments without Rove refuting those arguments.” [Marcy Wheeler, 6/15/2006]

Conservative columnist Byron York writes that in his view, one of the overarching conflicts between Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution team and the defense team of Lewis Libby is that of the “size” of the case. Fitzgerald wants to focus on the “little case,” the narrow parameters of the perjury charges Libby faces: namely, did Libby lie under oath when he told Fitzgerald’s grand jury that he learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and July 10 or 11, 2003)? Fitzgerald, York writes, has abandoned his pursuit of the larger case—who leaked Plame Wilson’s identity, why was it leaked, and did it violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, or some other law? York writes: “He has learned about the Big Case as much as one man with subpoena power, no supervision, unlimited funds, and no hesitation to threaten reporters with jail can learn. He just doesn’t want to talk about it.” On the other hand, Libby’s team wants to focus on the larger case. Was Libby merely following orders from senior Bush administration officials who felt “under attack” by Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson, and others? York writes: “Libby might have simply forgotten some of the details, and because of that testified incorrectly, his lawyers contend, because he was focusing on the big picture. If Libby’s defense team had its way, the whole thing—the Big Case—would be re-fought in the courtroom.” Judge Reggie Walton is trying to balance the two interests, York observes, and finding it understandably difficult to do so. [National Review, 5/10/2006]

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald files a brief with the court concerning the newspaper articles he intends to introduce during the trial of former White House official Lewis Libby. Fitzgerald says he intends to submit only one article in its entirety, a copy of the New York Times op-ed written by former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003), and he intends to instruct the jury that the op-ed is not necessarily being submitted for its factual accuracy so much as for the handwritten annotations made on the copy by Vice President Dick Cheney (see May 14, 2006). Fitzgerald says he also intends to submit five other news articles in redacted form, including Robert Novak’s article that outed Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Fitzgerald’s brief reads in part: “The July 14 Chicago Sun Times column by Mr. Novak is relevant because on the day the article was published, a CIA official was asked in the defendant’s presence, by another person in the OVP [Office of the Vice President], whether that CIA official had read that column. (The CIA official had not.) At some time thereafter… the CIA official discussed in the defendant’s presence the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column. This evidence directly contradicts the defense position that the defendant had no motive to lie because at the time of his interview and testimony the defendant thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong. Moreover, the evidence rebuts the defense assertion that the defendant could have easily forgotten his conversations with reporters Cooper and Miller on July 12 (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003 and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) if he learned of the potential consequences of such disclosures as a result of the publication of the Novak column on July 14. Instead, the evidence about the conversation concerning the Novak column provides a strong motivation for the defendant to provide false information and testimony about his disclosures to reporters.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/12/2006 ; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/12/2006 ]

Lewis Libby’s lawyers file a supplemental brief extending and reiterating their arguments in favor of compelling the CIA, the White House, and other government agencies to submit a vast array of classified documents for Libby’s defense (see December 14, 2005, January 9, 2006, January 23, 2006, January 31, 2006, (February 16, 2006), February 21, 2006, February 24, 2006, February 27, 2006, March 1, 2006, March 2-7, 2006, March 10, 2006, March 17, 2006, and April 5, 2006). The defense indicates it intends to call as witnesses the following government officials: former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and former CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. To fairly prepare for their testimonies, the defense argues, it must be supplied with all pertinent documents, classified or not, relating to their involvement in the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity, Plame Wilson’s covert status, the White House’s efforts to bolster its arguments for the Iraq invasion, and the White House’s attempts to discredit Wilson as a believable critic of its policies. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/12/2006 ]

A photograph of the copy of Wilson’s op-ed annotated by Dick Cheney. [Source: Department of Justice / New York Times] (click image to enlarge)Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, pursuing charges that former vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby lied to his grand jury about revealing the identity of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see January 2004, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004), introduces into evidence a document that directly implicates Libby’s former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, in Libby’s allegedly criminal behavior. Notated Clipping - Fitzgerald submits an original clipping of a New York Times op-ed written by Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, challenging the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003). The clipping bears notations in Cheney’s own hand, as well as Cheney’s fingerprints. Cheney’s commentary reads: “Have they done this sort of thing before? [Cheney is referring to the CIA’s decision to send Wilson to Niger to investigate the uranium claims—see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002.] Send an amb. to answer a question. Do we ordinarily send people out to do pro bono work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?” It is unclear when Cheney made the notes, but prosecutors believe they were taken before the July 14, 2003 column by Robert Novak that outed Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). According to Fitzgerald’s filing, Cheney’s copy of the op-ed is now “at the center of the sequence of events leading” to Libby’s alleged perjury and obstruction of justice. [CNN, 5/14/2006; New York Times, 5/14/2006; Newsweek, 5/16/2006]'Acutely Focused' Attention of Cheney, Libby on Wilson - The filing goes on to state that Cheney’s notes support the idea that Wilson’s op-ed drew the attention of Cheney and Libby, and “acutely focused” their attention on Wilson’s assertions “and on responding to those assertions.… The article, and the fact that it contained certain criticisms of the administration, including criticism regarding issues dealt with by the Office of the Vice President, serve both to explain the context of, and provide the motive for, many of the defendant’s statements and actions at issue in this case. The annotated version of the article reflects the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president to Mr. Wilson’s op-ed article, and thus is relevant to establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant’s immediate superior, including whether Mr. Wilson’s wife had sent him on a junket.” [CNN, 5/14/2006; Newsweek, 5/16/2006] Libby testified before the grand jury about the annotated op-ed, and that testimony is now entered into evidence. Libby said he recalled discussing the issues with Cheney, and said of those conversations: “I recall that along the way he asked, ‘Is this normal for them to just send somebody out like this uncompensated, as it says?’ He was interested in how did that person come to be selected for this mission. And at some point, his wife worked at the agency, you know, that was part of the question.” A prosecutor asked Libby, “Was it a topic that was discussed on a daily basis… on multiple occasions each day in fact?” Libby answered, “Yes, sir.” Libby acknowledged that during that time, Cheney indicated that he was upset about the Wilson article and what he considered to be false attacks on his credibility, saying: “I recall that he was very keen to get the truth out. He wanted to get all the facts out about what he [Cheney] had or hadn’t done—what the facts were or were not. He was very keen on that and said it repeatedly. ‘Let’s get everything out.’” During his testimony before the grand jury, prosecutors did not believe Libby’s assertion that Cheney might have “scribbled” notes on the Wilson op-ed on July 14, the day Novak’s column was published. Libby testified: “And I think what may have happened here is what he may have—I don’t know if he wrote, he wrote the points down. He might have pulled out the column to think about the problem and written on it, but I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.” [National Journal, 1/12/2007]Cheney's Other Actions - Fitzgerald has already asserted that Cheney had attempted to pass Wilson’s trip to Niger off as a “junket”—essentially a taxpayer-funded excursion with little real purpose—to discredit Wilson’s claims about the Iraq-Niger affair. Fitzgerald has also asserted that Cheney, acting with the approval of President Bush, authorized Libby to disclose some of the classfied portions of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002, June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) to reporters to rebut some of Wilson’s claims. The Cheney notes provide, in reporter Michael Isikoff’s words, “significant new context to that assertion.” The notes show that Cheney had “personally raised questions about Wilson’s trip right after the publication of the Wilson column—and five days before Libby confirmed to Time reporter Matt Cooper that he had ‘heard’ that Wilson’s wife… had played a role in sending him to Africa” (see July 13, 2005). [CNN, 5/14/2006; Newsweek, 5/16/2006]Cheney 'at Center of Campaign to Discredit Wilson' - Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein later write, “The annotation places Cheney at the center of the campaign to discredit Wilson, aware early on that Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 217] Plame Wilson herself will write: “Given Cheney’s vaunted decades of government service, it is frankly unbelievable that he would ask such questions. He would have known that the CIA frequently sends US citizens abroad, on a pro bono basis, to answer specific intelligence questions. It is even quite possible that the CIA debriefed employees of Halliburton, the multinational company that Cheney headed prior to becoming vice president, when they returned from business trips in restricted countries of interest to the United States. Cheney’s marginal notes should be more accurately interpreted as marching orders to staff on how to spin Joe’s story so that Cheney could stay as far from it as possible while simultaneously undermining Joe’s credibility.” (Emphasis in the original.) [Wilson, 2007, pp. 288]

The Libby defense team files a brief with the court arguing that the special counsel’s recent filing about presentation of news articles into evidence is unsatisfactory (see May 12, 2006), and says that the prosecution must not be allowed to present a copy of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003), annotated with notes written by Vice President Dick Cheney (see May 14, 2006), into evidence. The defense says that Lewis Libby had never seen the op-ed before the FBI showed it to him in November 2003 (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). “These arguments are tantamount to an acknowledgment that the state of mind of witnesses other than Mr. Libby will be important at trial,” Libby’s lawyers write. The defense also reiterates arguments that the government must provide classified documents for Libby to mount an adequate defense (see May 12, 2006), and reassures Judge Reggie Walton that they do not intend “to use this case to reargue the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq.” They acknowledge that given the fact that a jury will made up of Washington, DC, residents, “such an approach would be a foolish and self-destructive trial strategy.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/19/2006 ; NBC News, 5/20/2006; Washington Post, 5/20/2006]

Judge Reggie Walton issues an order disallowing, in large part, the Libby defense team’s motions to compel discovery of an array of government classified documents (see March 17, 2006, April 5, 2006, May 12, 2006, and May 19, 2006). “[T]he defendant’s motion to compel is largely without merit,” Walton writes. He recognizes that the charges against Lewis Libby are impacted by former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the Iraq invasion (see July 6, 2003), Wilson’s trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and the exposure of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA official (see July 14, 2003). Walton intends to allow a “limited” amount of evidence to be admitted in regards to these concerns, but, he writes, “these events have merely an abstract relationship to the charged offenses.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 6/2/2006 ] Walton also compels prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to turn over “substitutes” for classified documents pertaining to Plame Wilson’s employment history with the CIA, potential damage caused by Plame Wilson’s identity disclosure, and the names of “three individuals whose identities were redacted from classified documents previously made available to the defense.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 6/2/2006 ] According to Salon’s Tim Grieve, Walton is clearly siding with Fitzgerald’s “small case” view over the Libby team’s “big case” view (see May 10, 2006), focusing primarily on the issue of Libby’s alleged perjury and disallowing Libby’s efforts to refocus the case on the Bush administration’s response to criticisms of its handling of the Iraq war. [Salon, 6/2/2006]

In an op-ed, the Wall Street Journal harshly criticizes the Patrick Fitzgerald prosecution of Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), and objects to Fitzgerald’s intention to use a July 2003 Journal column as evidence of Libby’s perjury. According to the Journal, the key passage from that column reads: “One of the mysteries of the recent yellowcake uranium flap is why the White House has been so defensive about an intelligence judgment that we don’t yet know is false, and that the British still insist is true. Our puzzlement is even greater now that we’ve learned what last October’s National Intelligence Estimate really said.” Now, the Journal writes, that column proved the editorial staff’s assertion that President Bush was truthful in his January 2003 assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), and former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s allegation that Bush was untruthful was, itself, untruthful (see July 6, 2003). Fitzgerald’s decision to use the Journal editorial “suggests that his case is a lot weaker than his media spin,” the Journal writes. The Journal notes that Libby was not a source for the 2003 editorial, “which quoted from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate concerning the Africa-uranium issue. But Mr. Fitzgerald alleges in a court filing that Mr. Libby played a role in our getting the information, which in turn shows that ‘notwithstanding other pressing government business, [Libby] was heavily focused on shaping media coverage of the controversy concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger.’” According to the Journal, Fitzgerald is asserting that government officials such as Libby “have no right to fight back against critics who make false allegations,” and continues, “To the extent our editorial is germane to this trial, in fact, it’s because it puts Mr. Libby’s actions into a broadly defensible context that Mr. Fitzgerald refuses to acknowledge.” The editorial concludes by asserting that Fitzgerald is siding with Wilson against Libby and the Bush administration in what it calls “a political fight.” [Wall Street Journal, 6/6/2006] Former state prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, covering the Libby trial at the progressive blog FireDogLake, uses lengthy excerpts from Judge Reggie Walton’s rulings to show that the Journal op-ed will, indeed, serve as evidence of Libby’s perjury. Smith accuses the Journal editorial staff of “shilling” for Libby and the Bush administration, and of being “willing participants” in a cover-up that would result in “lawbreakers” such as Libby going unpunished. [Christy Hardin Smith, 6/6/2006]

Joseph Wilson poses with Yearly Kos participant Natasha Chart. [Source: Pacific Views (.org)]Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who became the target of a White House smear campaign after he publicly criticized the government’s push for war with Iraq (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006), receives a standing ovation from the audience at his appearance at the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas. The convention is a group of bloggers and citizen journalists, mostly liberals and progressives, organized by the Daily Kos Web site. About a thousand convention goers gather to hear Wilson speak during one of the day’s panel discussions. Wilson says he will not be intimidated by what he calls a White House campaign to obscure lies told during the run-up to the war in Iraq. “We must and we can stand up to the schoolyard bullies and insure that these decisions on war and peace and other major issues are undertaken with the consent of the governed,” he says. Wilson goes on to say that the indictment of former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005) and the disclosures about the case that have come in subsequent court filings have vindicated him against critics who claim he lied or misrepresented the facts surrounding his 2002 mission to Africa (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003). “As facts emerge, of course, the dwindling number of those who still believe the thesis of ‘Wilson is a liar, or has been discredited,’ are either victims of the ongoing disinformation campaign or the willful perpetrators of it,” he says. Wilson affirms that neither he nor his wife, exposed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, intend to run for elective office. “I can assure you that neither she [nor] I intend to do anything other than return to our private lives,” he says. Former CIA Agent Reaffirms Damage Done by Plame Wilson's Exposure - One of Wilson’s panel colleagues, former CIA agent and State Department official Larry Johnson (see September 30, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, and October 23-24, 2003), says partisan Republicans have lost sight of the gravity of what he believes was a deliberate campaign to expose Plame Wilson’s status for political reasons. “How it is that conservative Republicans can excuse what is nothing short of treason is beyond me,” he says. Johnson describes himself as “a lifelong conservative.” He reiterates his earlier statements that Plame Wilson was not publicly known as a CIA official before being “outed” by columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003). “Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson was an undercover CIA officer until the day her name appeared in Robert Novak’s column,” Johnson says. Libby’s lawyers have said they have witnesses who will testify that Plame Wilson’s CIA affiliation was known outside the government, but they have not identified those witnesses. Plame Wilson’s exposure did “damage… to the intelligence operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and ultimately to the security of this nation,” Johnson tells the audience. White House political strategist Karl Rove, whom Wilson once said should be “frog marched” out of the White House in handcuffs (see August 21, 2003), should have his security clearance revoked and be fired, Johnson says, regardless of whether he is indicted. Journalists: Media Did Not Do Its Job in Covering Story - Another panel member, the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin, says journalists have become so preoccupied by the jailing of fellow reporter Judith Miller (see October 7, 2004) that they have lost sight of the broader story. “The really sad moment for journalism here is, faced with this incredibly important story, reporters didn’t go out and develop sources for this story,” he says. “This is a hell of a story.” Froomkin calls Miller “a humiliated and discredited shill,” presumably for the Bush administration. Fellow panel member Murray Waas of the National Journal says most major news outlets have not adequately covered the story. “There’s no reporter for any major news organization covering it even one or two days a week,” he says. “I don’t know why.” Waas says that perhaps some editors have ignored the story because it involves leaks to reporters at those same news outlets. “Their own role is so comprised that they hope it just goes away,” he says. [New York Sun, 6/10/2006]

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003), informs White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove that he does not plan to file charges against him in conjunction with the leak. [Associated Press, 6/13/2006; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]'No Deal' - Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin says that he negotiated no deals with Fitzgerald to spare his client from prosecution: “There has never, ever been any discussion of a deal in any way, shape, or form.” [Jeralyn Merritt, 6/13/2006]'A Chapter that Has Ended' - The decision follows months of wrangling between Fitzgerald’s team and Luskin. Neither Fitzgerald nor Luskin give any details about the issues and actions behind the decision, but Luskin says, “We believe that the special counsel’s decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove’s conduct.” Rove spokesman Mark Corallo says that Rove made no deals with Fitzgerald to cooperate with the investigation, and that the decision is based solely on Fitzgerald’s findings. President Bush says of the news: “It’s a chapter that has ended. Fitzgerald is a very thorough person. I think he’s conducted his investigation in a dignified way. And he’s ended his investigation.… There’s still a trial to be had. And those of us involved in the White House are going to be very mindful of not commenting on this issue.” Christopher Wolf, a lawyer for Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, says that the couple is considering filing a civil suit against Rove. “The day still may come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons,” Wolf says. [New York Times, 6/13/2006; Associated Press, 6/13/2006]Rove 'Elated' - Corallo describes Rove as “elated” over the news. Legal analyst Andrew Cohen says: “Prosecutors have ethical obligations not to indict someone when they don’t think they can win at trial and I suspect that may be what happened here. For whatever reason Fitzgerald the prosecutor didn’t believe he could take a case against Rove to a jury and win it.” [CBS News, 6/13/2006]A Variety of Responses - Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean says of Rove: “He doesn’t belong in the White House. If the president valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove, Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago. So I think this is probably good news for the White House, but it’s not very good news for America.” [Associated Press, 6/13/2006] “The notion of the leak and the overall White House involvement, that ain’t over,” says Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). “Obviously, we know that ‘Scooter’ Libby is not Karl Rove. But you have the vice president of the United States involved, or at least his office was involved.” Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) says that Fitzgerald’s decision not to prosecute Rove should trigger a Congressional investigation into whether Rove mishandled classified information when he discussed Plame Wilson with reporters. Though Fitzgerald conducted a “narrow” criminal invesigation, Waxman says, Congress should examine the broader issue of whether Rove deserved to keep his high-level security clearance (see July 13, 2005). [Los Angeles Times, 6/14/2006] The Republican National Committee (RNC) circulates quotes from Democratic lawmakers attacking Rove under the headline of “Wrong Again: Prejudging Karl Rove Is Latest Example of Democrats’ Overheated Rhetoric and False Statements.” “What you had in this case was an unbelievable example of misjudgment for political purposes by leading Democrats,” says RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. He adds that the entire Rove imbroglio is just an example of how Democrats “rush to judgment.” Democratic leaders “owe [Rove] an apology,” Mehlman says. [Washington Post, 6/13/2006; Los Angeles Times, 6/14/2006] Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, are deeply disappointed at the decision. In 2007, Plame Wilson will write: “It was hard to process that someone who had appeared before a grand jury five times (see April 26, 2006), and had admitted that he had spoken to Robert Novak and Matt Cooper in the week before my name was published (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), would face no consequences for his actions.… While our faith in Fitzgerald’s skills and integrity remained unshaken, we couldn’t help but wonder, along with everyone else, what the special prosecutor had received or heard from Rove to prompt his decision.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 250] Criminal defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, writes that she believes Rove has “cooperated with Fitzgerald by testifying to the grand jury five times and providing whatever information he had without a safety net. Without a 5k. Without assurances he would not be indicted. That’s a hell of a risk, but Luskin pulled it off. My hat’s off to Luskin.… I’m ready to put this to bed. Karl Rove walked. He’s one of the rare subjects of an investigation who was able to talk his way out of an indictment.” [Jeralyn Merritt, 6/13/2006] Former prosecutor and blogger Christy Hardin Smith, writing for the progressive blog FireDogLake, writes: “If Luskin is coming out and saying publicly that they got a letter from Pat Fitzgerald which says that Rove will not be charged, there are two things that I want to see and know: (1) what does the letter actually say, word for word; and (2) does it say something along the lines of ‘Please thank Karl for his cooperation in this matter.’” Smith adds: “Patrick Fitzgerald and his team are career professionals. You do not charge someone with a criminal indictment merely because they are scum. You have to have the evidence to back up any charges—not just that may indicate that something may have happened, but you must have evidence that criminal conduct occurred and that you can prove it. You charge the evidence you have, you try the case you can make, and you don’t go down a road that will ultimately be a waste of the public’s money and time once you have ascertained that the case is simply not there. It doesn’t mean that you don’t think the SOB that you can’t charge isn’t a weasel or guilty as hell, it just means that you can’t prove it. (And, fwiw [for what it’s worth], those times are the worst of your career, because you truly hate to let someone go when you know in your gut they’ve done something wrong.)” [Christy Hardin Smith, 6/13/2006]

Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters writes that Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), has, in writing about his interactions with the federal agents investigating the leak (see July 12, 2006), “repeated a number of false and contradictory statements regarding the investigation and the manner in which he learned of Plame [Wilson]‘s identity.” Novak did reveal White House political strategist Karl Rove as one of his sources, but did not reveal his “primary source,” then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003). [Media Matters, 7/12/2006] Author Marcy Wheeler, who blogs at The Next Hurrah under the moniker “Emptywheel,” concurs, and cites similar instances of Novak’s contradictory statements. [Marcy Wheeler, 7/13/2006]Contradicts Earlier Statements - Novak does not reveal Armitage’s name, but he does discuss something of the Armitage disclosure, saying that Armitage’s revelation was “inadvertent.” Though this coincides with other Novak discussions, where he has called Armitage’s discussion of Plame Wilson “offhand” (see September 29, 2003 and October 1, 2003), it contradicts information he gave to two Newsday reporters in the days following his column’s publication: at that time, he told the reporters that he “was given” the Plame Wilson information and his sources—Rove and Armitage—considered the information “significant” (see July 21, 2003). Misrepresents Plame Wilson's Involvement in Husband's Mission - Novak also repeats the falsehood that Plame Wilson “helped initiate” her husband, Joseph Wilson’s, 2002 trip to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003), a falsehood he claims has been “confirmed” by a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report (see July 9, 2004). And two years previously, Novak admitted that the committee failed to reach a conclusion on Plame Wilson’s involvement in the Niger mission (see July 15, 2004). [Media Matters, 7/12/2006]Story Substantially Different from Rove's - Wheeler points out that Novak’s version of events is substantially different from the events Rove has laid out. According to Novak, Rove already knew Plame Wilson’s name; Rove says he neither knew the name nor divulged it to Novak. Novak says Rove called him, but Rove says Novak placed the call. According to Rove, when Novak asked about Joseph Wilson’s wife being a CIA official, he replied, “Oh, you’ve heard that too,” but Novak suggests Rove said something more. Novak also contradicts his earlier reporting, where he implied he confirmed (not learned) Plame Wilson’s identity from Who’s Who in America (see October 1, 2003). Moreover, Novak told reporters in 2003 that White House officials gave him the information on Plame Wilson, “I didn’t dig it out” (see July 21, 2003), implying that he was called by Rove and perhaps other White House officials as well. In his October 1, 2003 article, he wrote that he called Rove (whom he identified then as “another official”). [Marcy Wheeler, 7/13/2006] On Fox News, Novak says that the original reporting that he “was given” the information on Plame Wilson was “a misstatement.” He goes on: “That was an interview I did on the telephone with Newsday shortly after it appeared. Some of the things that they said that quoted me that are not in quotes are paraphrases, and they’re incorrect, such as the whole idea that they [the White House] planted this story with me. I never told that to the Newsday reporters.” [Christy Hardin Smith, 7/13/2006]Contradicts CIA Official's Account of Interview - Media Matters also notes that Novak’s account of his discussion of Plame Wilson’s identity with then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow is substantially different from Harlow’s account (see (July 11, 2003). Harlow has said, both in interviews and in grand jury testimony, that he warned Novak not to divulge Plame Wilson’s name or CIA status in the strongest terms he could without himself divulging classified information. [Media Matters, 7/12/2006]

Karl Rove and Robert Novak, 2003. Rove’s button reads, ‘I’m a Source, Not a Target.’ [Source: Lauren Shays / AP / New York Times]Conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status in a column three years earlier (see July 14, 2003), says that he can now write about his testimony before the grand jury investigating the leak. In his current column, he reveals that White House political strategist Karl Rove was one of his sources, as was CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Novak writes that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed his attorneys that the “investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret.” Novak writes: “I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors, or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.” Novak says that Fitzgerald knew, “independent of me,” that his sources for his column outing Plame Wilson were Rove and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003), whom Novak does not identify in his column. “That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” Novak writes. Novak also identifies a third source, Harlow (see (July 11, 2003) and Before July 14, 2003). Novak writes that he reveals Rove as a source “because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection.” Harlow, Novak writes, “has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection.” He does not name Armitage because Armitage “has not come forward to identify himself,” though he does note that Armitage considered his disclosure of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity “inadvertent.” After learning of Plame Wilson’s identity from Armitage, Novak writes, “I sought out the second administration official [Rove] and the CIA spokesman [Harlow] for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame [Wilson]‘s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in Who’s Who in America. I considered his wife’s role in initiating Wilson’s mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.” [CNN, 7/11/2006; Human Events, 7/12/2006; New York Times, 7/12/2006] Novak also says of Armitage: “The primary source was not a political operative.… I don’t believe it was part of a plan to discredit anybody.” Novak denies cooperating with a White House strategy to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a prominent critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies (see June 2003, October 1, 2003, and April 5, 2006). [Washington Post, 7/11/2006] Novak testified that when he asked about Plame Wilson’s CIA status, Rove replied, “Oh, you know that, too?” In Rove’s recollection, he responded, “I’ve heard that, too.” Rove’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, says that Rove did not even know Plame Wilson’s name at the time he spoke with Novak, that the columnist called Rove, not the other way around, and that Rove simply replied he had heard the same information that Novak passed along to him regarding Plame Wilson. However, “There was not much of a difference” between the recollections of Rove and Novak, Corallo says. Harlow’s difference with Novak’s portrayal of their conversation is more substantial than the differences between Novak’s and Rove’s recollections. Harlow has said that he warned Novak not to reveal Plame Wilson’s name or CIA status, but Novak has written, “I certainly wouldn’t have used her name if anyone [i.e. Harlow] had indicated she might be in danger.” [Washington Post, 7/11/2006; Associated Press, 7/12/2006] A former intelligence official tells CNN that when Harlow first spoke to Novak about Plame Wilson, he was not aware of her status as a covert employee, and that he tried to talk Novak out of publishing her name when he did find out, making it clear the disclosure could be damaging. [CNN, 7/11/2006] Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters writes that Novak’s column is filled with “false and contradictory statements” (see July 12, 2006).

Responding to columnist Robert Novak’s disclosure that White House political strategist Karl Rove was one of his sources in the Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 12, 2006), Mary Matalin, the former media adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, launches an attack against the prosecutors investigating the leak on Fox News. Matalin says that neither Lewis Libby, the former White House official charged with perjury and obstruction in the investigation (see October 28, 2005), nor anyone else committed a crime—even going so far as to claim that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald acknowledged that no one committed a crime—and former ambassador Joseph Wilson “flat-out lied” in his July 2003 op-ed debunking the Iraq-Niger uranium claim (see July 6, 2003). Fitzgerald repeatedly asserted the serious nature of Libby’s crimes in Libby’s indictment, noting that Libby both lied and obstructed justice in his dealings with the FBI and with Fitzgerald’s grand jury. Moreover, Matalin’s claim that Wilson was “lying” is countered by numerous findings that the Iraq-Niger claims were absolutely false (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), including a July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on prewar intelligence (see July 9, 2004). Matalin goes on to say that “everybody in town knew” that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent, an assertion again debunked by Fitzgerald in his indictment. [Media Matters, 7/12/2006]

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